We’ve been planning this Thanksgiving trip to Red Rock Canyon outside of Las Vegas for a long time, but it goes anything but smoothly. We thought Las Vegas wouldn’t be a big Thanksgiving Day destination, but I-15 is crammed with crazy traffic. I try to stop at the climbing store to pick up a guidebook, but of course it’s closed for the holiday. We’re supposed to meet our friends at Moderate Mecca, but we don’t know where it is. We don’t know which group site they’re in either. We start around the 13-mile, one-way park loop where we ask some climbers about Moderate Mecca, and discover it’s not in the loop, it’s in Calico Basin. Then I drive off without figuring out where in Calico Basin it, while Ann thinks I know. And so on. We do eventually get to the crag, but of course we forget the rack. By this time we’re getting snitty with each other, in front of our new friends no less. But I run back for the rack and we climb a nice 5.6+ trad route, and that clears the air. The place is beautiful and we have nothing to do but enjoy it for four days.
After dark we follow Mary to the Bonnie Springs resort, past the mini railroad ride and the goose pond to the fire-heated lodge, where we stuff ourselves with a traditional turkey dinner and meet some of the other climbers who have come for the weekend.
4 responses to “Red Rock Thanksgiving”
huh… anything resembling a holiday and Vegas gets packed.
so what IS “Moderate Mecca”? i have never heard of this, but i like the “Moderate” part.. the “Mecca” part is nice too.
jeez, if it’s moderates you like, go to the Easter Wall on the Owens Ridge. heh…
i looked at the pics. the rock looks primo as usual. the camping… looks like the gypsum mine with little rocks around it.
it’s so ironic that they can build whatever they want… pyramids, pirate ships, a light that can be seen from like 10 billion light years away, endless urban sprawl, but they really crack down HARD on the camping out in the desert. sick.
how’d jezze do? bet she liked the weather.
Jezze was stoked. Group sites are the way to go camping there – $25/nite and we had 15 people with room for more. One night there were loud people, one night we were loud, etc…
The climb we did at Moderate Mecca was OK. It looks like the place to knock off a few mellow single pitch trad routes in the sun with an easy approach. There was at least one fun-looking overhanging sport route there too. I don’t know any more, cause we didn’t have a guidebook.
so, you split that $25 all up. still, i am upset by the whole thing .. ok, no diatribes (yet).
so, that was pretty bad forgetting the rack i must admit.
i had a bit of a mystery. nah, i won’t go into it.
that dinner thing sounded really neat. reads like the whole trip was good except the traffic and that rack thing.
i guess i’ll here more about it later……… TTG