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| Adam standing in front of Armatron |
Adam and I met each other for a quick weekend of climbing in Red Rocks on February 26 and 27, 2022. The weather was nearly perfect, sunny with highs in the 50's and lows in the 20's.
February 26 - I wanted to try linking MysterZ (5.7) to Armatron (5.9-) again after giving up because of crowds the last time I was here. However, today I lived up to my reputation of getting lost easily and managed to get us onto the wrong climb entirely at the start of the day. We went up a single pitch on a buttress closer to the parking lot before I realized my mistake and we were forced to bail by rappelling off a #10 and #11 nut placement. I am really bad at route finding. But, we managed to figure things out and get onto MysterZ soon afterwards. We climbed the whole thing pretty quickly, but we still didn't get to the top in time to climb Armatron. I had brought too much gear for this climb (perhaps for an easy climb like this I don't need to bring a double rack) and this, combined with the weight of both double ropes and my backpack was really weighing me down. I will say that I was more efficient on this trip than on any previous occasion with the double ropes. As usual, my problem on this line was route-finding. I was glad to have another party ahead of me, even if they were climbing a bit more slowly than I would have preferred. The climb felt extremely easy, and I was constantly running it out way above my pieces. I also know I did not pitch it out as described in the guidebook or on Mountain Project, so there were two occasions when I actually ran out of rope early and was forced to build an anchor. I brought lots of large gear which was useful to have in places, but the climbing overall was so easy that I probably could have skipped it and carried less weight instead. The part where you reach something that looks like an overhanging chimney/offwidth at 5.9+ was interesting. Here, as I had read in several comments, you avoid going that way by rather blindly traversing over right through a roof into an easy hand crack. There was also a section of stemming through a very wide crack/chimney where I placed almost no gear, which certainly felt rather dangerous, but the climbing here again was super easy. By the time we got to the base of Armatron the sun was already behind the mountain, but this at least gave us a chance to get our bearings and be sure we found the base of the route easily the following day.
February 27 - We set out early on this morning and made it to the Armatron base right at the same time as another (more local) party was arriving. This turned out to be ideal, because this guy Dave was a really chatty character, and he gave us all the beta we needed to do both the climb and the descent. Overall, I felt that Armatron was very very easy for the grade. There were, perhaps, two 5.9 moves on the entire climb. The rest of the thing just felt super chill. That said, the climb itself was really beautiful. We were climbing it in full sun, and it was the perfect temperature (high 20's when we left the Pine Creek parking lot) on the wall (even a bit chilly when the wind started to blow and I didn't have a jacket on). This time I left my pack at the base and only brought a smaller rack consisting of single cams through #3 and a double rack of nuts. Even with this, I didn't ever feel as if I was running out of gear. The first pitch had 5 bolts and I didn't place a single piece. The next pitch was two finger cracks (5.9) where I did place some gear, and from there it transitioned around a bulge to the right into easier face climbing. Pro was plentiful. The next pitch was the "money" pitch. The black sandstone here is just so much harder and seems so much more dependable than the white/red stuff we often see in other places at Red Rocks. This pitch really could take a nut wherever you wanted to stop and place one, and I climbed it a good bit more slowly than I needed to so that I could savor the feeling of the warm black plates baking in the sun. The fact that all of the belay stations on Armatron are bolted definitely made things go even more quickly - I was constantly riding on the tail of the party in front of us (Dave and Dillon). I was surprised by this, because Dave seemed to have done so much climbing and knew the route so well, but I guess I was just climbing quickly. Pitch 4 felt like more of the same as pitch 3. Pitch 5 was easy climbing along an arete. Pitch 6 was the boulder problem (do a pullup!) followed by easy climbing to the top along another arete. From here we unroped and scrambled the last hundred feet or so to the top (this was exposed but very very easy climbing). The view from the top was expansive and beautiful, we could see all the way to the lake in the distance. I wrote a note in the summit register in an ammo can, and we then followed Dave and Dillon back to the Armatron base to retrieve my pack and other gear. This climb has a long (1.5-2 hour?) approach and a similarly long descent, but this just adds to the fun of the day. It would be fun to link MysterZ with this climb, but that would require climbing quickly and not getting lost on the approach and on the climb. I definitely DID NOT want to be making the Armatron descent in the dark without someone else showing me exactly where to go. It was quite icy and exposed in some places, and slipping could have been really bad.
