Rainbow Wall, Original Route

By: Yoav Altman | Climbers: Yoav Altman, Ilona Barash |Trip Dates: late November, 2002

Photo: Gary Clark

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YOAV: For Ilona and me, Thanksgiving weekend is a kind of anniversary. Three years ago on our "second date" we climbed Mt. Whitney via the Mountaineers Route in bitter cold, sharing a tent for the first time.

ILONA: The time seemed ripe for another adventure on Thanksgiving, and thoughts of a turkey dinner somehow seemed far less appealing than a bit of good, honest, suffering with the person I love the most.

YOAV: For this, our fourth Thanksgiving together, we decided to do a wall, and Zion has always been our first choice for aid climbing. It's comfortably climbable in the winter, has short approaches and is only an 8-hour drive away. Whenever we drive there, we pass by Vegas and the associated sandstone escarpment and consider the Rainbow Wall, but the beta on the approach has always scared us away. Swain's description of "lung-searing" slabs, rumors of 8-hour approaches, and finally, seeing the wall and scoping the approach from the top of Chrimson Chrysalis convinced us that our time was better spent driving to Zion than exhausting ourselves hauling the pigs through hell.

ILONA: The Lowe Route on Angels Landing was calling…

YOAV: But all that changed last month, when I had the pleasure of climbing in Joshua Tree with Larry Hamilton, who along with Joe Herbst completed the first ascent of the Rainbow Wall (amongst some other Red Rock classics). Larry mentioned that he didn't remember the approach being too grievous, and though he politely declined an invitation to join us for a repeat. That was all we needed to hear.

We stopped by REI on Tuesday night to pick up a couple of Bugaboos and Lost Arrows as recommended by MadDog (http://www.tradgirl.com/redrocks/beta.htm), and packed the bags.

After work on Wednesday we hit the road, and after a stop at the taco shop with the best guacamole we drove non-stop to Vegas, pulling in to the parking lot outside the loop road some time around 1am. We crashed in Godzilla, and drove the loop early the next morning to the Oak Creek trailhead where we made some final adjustments to the bags. After some consideration, we decided to leave the hammer and pins in the truck to make the climb more adventurous. We knew we could do it with the pins, but thought we'd have to push ourselves a little harder to make the wall go clean. Then again, we brought the cheater stick so we weren't really committed to an ethically clean ascent.

ILONA: All in all it was really a leisurely start - the skies were blue, the air was still, and we felt like we had all day.

YOAV: Our haulbags are small and space was at a premium so we wondered what we could leave behind. Instead of bringing bulky and heavy approach shoes, we decided to hike in to the wall in Chacos and switch to our loose-fitting climbing shoes at the base of the slabs. We'd wear these throughout the wall, and then switch back to sandals for the descent. I also opted to leave one jumar behind and clean pitches using one ascender and my Gri-Gri.

ILONA: The decision to go in sandals was not really a hard one - we've hiked long distances in them many times before, and they really are our approach shoes of choice.

YOAV: We dropped the bags off behind the bushes and drove Godzilla back to the lot outside of the loop so that we wouldn't get a $50 ticket if we didn't make it back to the car by Saturday at 5pm.

After hiking the mile back to our bags, we started humping up the approach but never found the "2-boulder" entrance to the drainage. Regardless, things went pretty smoothly and hiking in sandals worked well as usual. The approach starts out the same as for Crimson Chrysalis, but then takes the ridge to the right of the drainage below the ramp to Crimson. As expected, the hike was strenuous and our pigs felt heavy, but the scenery was nice and the weather was pleasant with nary a cloud in the sky. The forecast called for a 20% chance of showers on Friday, but a look to the sky on Thursday made that hard to believe. We were grateful when we reached the shade of the canyon proper.

ILONA: And said a final goodbye to the sun for the next 3 days.

YOAV: It took us two hours to get to the fixed lines at the base of the slabs. The fixed lines run up a steep section of slab through a slick, water-carved groove and but on a day like Thursday it was hard to imagine that this desert sees enough water to carve such features, much less an entire canyon. In a similar vein, I've longed to see the washes in Joshua Tree fill up because it usually seems so improbable.

I clipped into the fixed line, bounced a couple of times and jugged on up. We had heard that the slabs were sketchy with heavy packs, so I fixed 200' above the already fixed lines and headed back to pick up my pig. Ilona and I both thought that the slabs weren't that fearsome in climbing shoes, but agreed that they might be scary in hiking boots. At the top of the slabs we bushwhacked to the base and arrived at the bivy pad 4 hours after we left the trailhead. If we hadn't fixed the slabs we probably would have saved a half-hour but we were ahead of schedule, so no big deal. We had a small snack and spread out our sleeping bags to stake our claim, as we'd heard that a party might hike in tonight for a free attempt the next morning.

Ilona had read more trip reports than I, and seemed to have pitch-by-pitch beta, so I was a little wary when she offered me the first lead. Usually we go best of 3 roshambo. The first pitch of the day always makes me nervous, and the easy first pitch of the Rainbow Wall was no exception. While only 5.6, I moved tentatively, placing 4 pieces on a short pitch. The pitch ends 75' up on a ledge with one good (1/2") and one bad (star-dryvin) bolt. I combined this with the 2nd pitch, which I've read was one of the clean-aid cruxes. Two moves of aid (though supposedly 5.7 free) through an overhang then a switch to free brought me to a blank looking dihedral. A couple of bolts and hooks later and I was staring up at a bolt 10' above me.

ILONA: I really hadn't heard anything bad about this pitch, I was just feeling lazy and would rather climb the second pitch (actually 3 and 4) than sit at a long belay in the cold and dark.

YOAV: "Ilona, I don't know what to do here." Though I damn well did know what I had to do. Option One was a bad camhook off a camhook, to a bathook, to a bad camhook, to the anchors. Either that, or I'd have to leave my aiders and mantle from my cliffhanger onto a 1/2" edge, then stem up to clip the bolt. The topo called this 5.7 but is sure looked harder to me. Ilona, sensing my fear, offered to send up the cheater stick and I gladly accepted. A few minutes later, the pitch was in the bag and Ilona was cleaning.

ILONA: You gotta love cheater sticks - although it makes me have all the more respect for Larry and Joe. Aid climbing is still so scary to me, even with all the fixed gear and various cheating devices. If it makes us move faster, I've got no problem using a little ingenuity.

YOAV: Ilona aided up the "5.8 lieback" with a #5 camalot and then switched to free for a few feet before moving back to aid and linking Swain topo pitches 3 and 4 in the dark, using lots of hooking and clipping mostly fixed gear (though she hooked past a bolt that she didn't see by the light of her dim headlamp).

ILONA: This pitch actually felt like a bit of a breakthrough for me. I started out all shaky, with that familiar "Do I remember how to do this?" feeling. By the end of the third pitch, I was trusting hooks and feeling elated and free on the 5.8ish offwidth at the top. My confidence was growing, and the climbing on this wall was fantastic.

YOAV: After fixing 4 pitches, we felt pretty good about our prospects of getting to Over the Rainbow Ledge the next day in time to fix a few more pitches and enjoy the view. For me, one of the main attractions of the Original Route has always been this ledge, which is supposed to offer spacious accommodations with a unique view of the Las Vegas strip. In fact, I brought my camera along just for this reason, hoping to take some long exposures of Vegas at night.

After a hearty Thanksgiving dinner of cold canned chili and ravioli with snickers for dessert, we were in bed before 8pm, our alarms set for 5:30 a.m. I went to bed confident that we would climb the wall without too much trouble. Any pre-climb jitters were gone and I was looking forward to some fine climbing with lots of transition between aid and free, something I needed to work on.

The sky was clear, the stars were out, and morning came before too long. The nighttime temperatures probably reached freezing, but not much colder. Just as it started to get light, a party of two, Tim and Jeff, showed up hoping to free the route in a day.

ILONA: They happened to show up at a rather inopportune time - I was just finishing my morning crap when I hear some rustling ahead of me and see the bobbing of Jeff's head come through the trees. I calmly pretended that nothing unusual was happening, as I welcomed them to the wall, and wished them the best of luck on their free climbing attempt. At least it was still kind of dark.

YOAV: We said that we'd be happy to let them start up ahead of us as they'd certainly be moving faster. We watched as Jeff solved the 2nd pitch's 5.12 crux with a deep stem and long step-across. Tim, who was following most of the route off the couch, had a little more trouble with the pitch. When Jeff cleared the 2nd belay, I started jugging our fixed rope, and Ilona joined me soon after Tim started following the second pitch. I hauled and Ilona jugged the next line while Tim rested at the anchors on top of 3. Jeff felt that the 3rd pitch was more difficult than the second, due to its sustained nature and steep and "wild" climbing, and had taken a fall on the overhung face climbing in the middle of the pitch. Tim, who was sending 5.11 pitches higher up, fell on the "5.8" lieback which opens the third pitch.

ILONA: Ha! I knew that part seemed hard for 5.8. Now I don't feel so bad about aiding it.

YOAV: By the time Jeff had left the 4th belay, we had hauled and I was ready to lead, but we had spent a couple of hours waiting for them to get to our highpoint and it was well after noon. The next pitch started with free climbing up a loose column and transitioned to a few moves of what I consider delicate aid. The rest of the pitch was unremarkable C1 to the next anchor, unless you're free climbing, in which case you have to pull a hard undercling to turn the roof. We watched Tim walk this pitch.

Ilona freed most of the next 5.10/C1 pitch in great form, but stopped early at what turned out to be an intermediate belay station.

ILONA: I think I was inspired by Jeff's prowess, but this was yet another breakthrough. I'd never done any "real" climbing on a wall before, and this certainly felt like it. Awesome small edges around a finger crack, followed by some rounded unprotected grunting near the top. Truly incredible, and I was happy.

YOAV: The next pitch brought us to Faith Ledges as darkness approached. While I was leading it hailed for maybe two minutes, and Ilona and I laughed that this must be the 20% chance of showers that we were dreading. After hauling, I shortfixed and took off for another 100' until I could set an anchor at the base of the 5.8 chimney. Ilona struggled up this feature as the topo promised she would, and then had a hard time finding the route. She finally set an anchor at the base of an overhanging wide slot as a rescue helicopter buzzed us repeatedly and blasted us with blinding searchlights. Did someone forget to tell the rangers what climb they needed to be rescued from? Or was someone overdue for leftover turkey? In any case it wasn't much past 7:00pm when the chopper started searching the canyons for stranded climbers. The crew finally found what they were looking for after about an hour of flying and hovered over the summit of the Rose Tower.

ILONA: It turns out that I found the route just fine, but in the dark it looked scary and imposing. Maybe I just didn't eat enough Gu during the day, and shoving the pigs in front of me while cleaning earlier had worn me out. In any case, I was having no part of that next pitch and was glad to hand it over to Yoav. And besides, the helicopter buzzing us was making the whole situation seem less appealing and far more sinister than before.

YOAV: Wishing that the helicopter could light our way for a few minutes, I aided through most of the wide section in the dark with #4 to #5 Camalots, until the angle eased and I could free climb up a leaning slot to a ledge with a crappy bolt. Ilona led a short airy pitch that started off with an exposed step-around onto an unseen face and ended up dumping her onto Over The Rainbow Ledge with easy free climbing. I followed, and we exploded haulbags (I should point out that the hauling between Faith Ledges and Over The Rainbow Ledge was heinous) onto the ledge, which was as impressive as promised. The views of Vegas were awesome. The lights of the strip shimmered like jewels, as clouds, lit orange from the city lights, sent little streamers of rain down on sections of city. We watched as the helicopter crew made landing after landing on the top of the Rose Tower and wondered what could be going on up there on such a mellow route with an easy descent.

As we went to bed it started to drizzle, but we weren't too concerned, as we'd been on desert walls in weather before. Usually it cleared up in a few hours.

ILONA: The ledge was unusually comfortable and despite the continual patter of rain on my bivy sack, I slept like a baby, happy, warm, content, and enthusiastic about the next day. It had rained and snowed a bit like this when we were on Moonlight, and that went fine…

YOAV: As Saturday morning dawned, we woke up to a steady drizzle. I cracked the zipper on my bivy sac just enough to get a peek out and found myself looking into a cloud. Whiteness anywhere I looked, except towards my feet - covered in a crust of slush - and just beyond them was Ilona, lying in a 2-inch deep (and deepening) puddle. Going up was out of the question. It had slushed all night, and the wall was running in water. The varnished rock was as slick as glass, and I sure as hell wasn't going to lead the next free pitch in desert-alpine conditions.

ILONA: At 5:30 am my alarm goes off and it's still raining. I yell over to Yoav to see what he's thinking, and we agree to at least sleep on it until the sun comes up. An hour later, it's still raining.

YOAV: Comfy in her crib, Ilona didn't know that she had helped to haul my cell-phone up the wall. Stealthily as we packed the pigs, I had slipped that bit of techno-gadgetry into my food bag. Now it seemed that the phone would prove its worth. I would call the Red Rock Ranger Station (number programmed in memory to facilitate getting late exit permits) and ask for the weather forecast. They of course would tell me that the system would pass by noon, and I would advise Ilona that we should wait to see what the weather did. We had plenty of salami and string cheese, tons of Gu and a can of pears (with cinnamon spice!!)- enough food to sit on the ledge and wait out the weather. Except that the phone had spent the night in my food bag, out on the ledge in the slush. The food bag was now a water repository, and phone was soaked. Beyond reason, I stuck the phone between my thighs, hoping that some body heat would get the power button to respond. No go. We'd have to base our actions on nothing but our senses and intuition. Reason (faulty) suggested that it never rained in the desert for more than a day. Given that there was only a 20% chance of rain when we checked on Wednesday evening, the storm system couldn't be that big. One option was to wait out the day on the ledge, propped against the wall in our bivy sacs watching the world go by. Hopefully by Sunday, the sun would be shining and we would be able to rappel the route in reasonable comfort. But then we'd be forced to descend, walk out, and drive home in one day.

ILONA: Yoav thought we should stick it out a bit longer, while I was having thoughts of getting out of there as soon as possible and getting a room at the Silverton. Another hour or so passes before we both start to get restless. I sit up for the first time all night and notice that I've been sleeping in a fucking puddle, 2 inches deep, and freezing. The rain that keeps falling is forming a layer of ice over my bivy sack, and the puddle is getting deeper. I grumble out of the sack and scoot a few feet to the left, where at least it is sort of dry. Yoav and I sit in our bivy sacks and look out at, well, nothing, because we are so socked in that we can't see more than twenty feet in front of our faces.

YOAV: The other option, the one that we knew would suck, was to get out of bed, put on our frozen harnesses, stuff our wet gear into the haulbags, and begin the numerous rappels through a watercourse to the ground with fully loaded pigs. And then, upon reaching the ground, we had to reverse the approach that has the reputation (when dry) of being the mother of all Red Rock approaches (which isn't saying much, but still…) We, of course, would have to do it in our Chacos in the freezing rain down a drainage that was actively draining, like a main vein.

ILONA: If we were going to bail today, I reasoned, we should do it now, before the washes fill up even more than they already are, and before the watercourse that is our escape route becomes a raging waterfall. Yoav counters that we are safe, warm, and relatively comfortable where we are, and that its bound to clear up before too long. We are in the Nevada desert, after all, and it is prime hypothermia territory out there if something went wrong during the descent. Going up was certainly out of the question, sitting all day on our asses and then facing a marathon day tomorrow (which could very well be just as wet and cold as today, if not worse) sounded distinctly unpleasant. Eventually we decided to bail.

YOAV: We discussed our options and started thinking about what we could leave behind for anchors. Once we got to end of Faith ledges there were fixed rap stations all the way down. Somewhere between Faith ledges and us was an abandoned rope that we could use for an anchor if needed. Ilona mentioned that it looked like it was short and that it had probably been chopped after it got stuck while being pulled. We looked at each other and smiled as we considered having to ascend a stuck rope in the freezing rain.

"If I go it will be trouble. If I stay it will be double."

And so the process began. Get out of bivy sack. Take a crap. Put on all my layers. Knock the ice off the harness and put it on. Knock the slush off the haul bags and put all the wet gear in them.

ILONA: We tried to comfort ourselves with the thought that at least we weren't 20 pitches up El Cap in a portaledge, just 8 pitches and the slabs (which were now covered with a few centimeters of water) up the Rainbow wall. My hands freeze, then come back to life with such pain that I was very close to puking.

YOAV: Oh yeah, and the worst part: put on the rock shoes that had been soaking in ice water all night. Put on frozen gloves. Then, get the ropes out of the puddle and flake them out. Rig the anchor. Toss the ropes. Clip the bag into my device, and ride the pig down, as muddy water wringed out of the rope by my rap device soaked my [Yoav's] Yoav.

While we were packing up, a break in the clouds allowed us to see the beautiful wall green with glistening lichen, the shimmering slabs below running with water, and a sizable waterfall over towards Crimson Chrysalis. It looked like a rainforest wonderland, and we were awed and smiling despite cold hands and feet.

ILONA: Who would believe it? The desert transformed into a temperate rainforest.

YOAV: The next anchor we rapped off of was a 1/4" star-dryvin and a loose slung block. From here slings around a decent tree brought us down to the bat cave. On the way down, I retrieved the 40' of rope left behind by another party. Ilona rapped down to the Bat Cave and gladly exclaimed that she had managed to keep the rope out of the rope-eating crack. We pulled and the rope got stuck in the rope-eating crack. We chopped our haul line and left behind a length of rope probably just as long as the one we had retrieved. From here we fixed the 30' section down to the bolt anchors and began the steep rappels through the watercourse that is the lower half of the Original Route. By now our feet felt like blocks of wood, as they should after a couple of hours in ice water.

The rappels down the face went as smoothly as they could and we got into a routine. Rap down, clip bag into anchor, lower down until bag is on anchor, clip in, off rappel. Pull rope, thread anchor, set up rappel, rig autoblock, wrestle bag off anchor. All the while, 33-degree water was dripping onto our feet, legs, harnesses and hands. Locking biners took 2 hands to operate as their mechanism got jammed with grit. Ilona's belay biner developed huge wear grooves from the muddy ropes. Grit was everywhere, and it was still raining.

Finally, after 7 or 8 rappels, we were at the base of the wall. We repacked for the hike out, and grabbed a rope that someone had left behind at the base of the wall, thinking that we might need its full length to rappel the slabs that were trivial when dry, but death when wet. In our wet climbing shoes we worked our way down, haulbags holding as much if not more water than we had poured out of our bottles up on Over The Rainbow Ledge.

ILONA: The going was painfully slow through the initial talus. I couldn't feel my feet, so every step had to be extremely deliberate. I was carrying the lead rope in my arms, which meant there was a lot of "toss the rope, butt-slide a slippery section, grab the rope and repeat." We did three or four raps off of trees to get down the worst of the slabs, until we reached the final fixed rope section.

YOAV: The slabs, which drain the entire basin that the Rainbow Wall defines, were running with water, and the culmination was a 60' waterfall, where when we jugged up two long days ago, there had been no more than a trickle. At the base of the waterfall was a knee-deep pool of frothy water, and that's exactly where gravity dictated that our rappel would end. Ilona had been worried about the pool all afternoon, and when I got to the inflection point where the slab steepened, she asked me "How does the pool look?"

ILONA: I remember on the way up thinking that the fixed ropes were in probably the worst possible place if it were to rain. Just to their left, the angle of the slab lessened considerably, and I was sure that we'd have to fix our found rope off to the side of the standard descent to avoid a swim. Ankle or even mid-calf deep water really wouldn't matter too much - our legs were already so wet that we probably wouldn't even feel it - but any deeper and we'd run the risk of getting our upper bodies wet. Because we were each wearing multiple layers of long underwear, fleece jackets, polypro jackets and a shell, our underlayers were actually dry. Getting them wet would have resulted in hypothermia.

YOAV: Not feeling charitable, I replied, "It sucks", which was the truth, but I didn't need to rub it in. I rapped down, feet in a freezing stream, until I was just over the pool and then swung to the right to a small ledge that allowed me to escape without taking a plunge.

ILONA: When Yoav said that it sucked, my heart sank. It was getting too late in the day to arrange another rappel point. So when it turned out that we could avoid the worst of the pool, I let out a loud whoop, went off rappel, shouldered the pig, and lumbered off down the trail, certain of success and with visions of a nice dry bivy cave dancing in my head.

YOAV: The time was 4pm and we had 30 minutes of twilight to make it to the bivy cave. I wasn't sure that we could find our way out by the dim light of our tikkas. We raced for the cave,

ILONA: More like crawled…

YOAV: lowered our bags down a tricky section, and downclimbed to find a dry cave, with dry leaves and firewood, and some nice places to sleep. I yelled up to Ilona that not only was the cave awesome, but that we would be enjoying a campfire tonight. She thought that sounded better than a room at the Silverton. After unpacking the wet gear and removing our harnesses, I set about making a fire, using every last bit of toilet paper we had. If you know Ilona and me, you know that this was an act of desperation. Finally, with some blowing the fire took off and we had warmth. Dinner by the fire was amazing even though it was the same crap we had been eating for 3 days: string cheese, salami, bagels, dehydrated bananas, more string cheese, and a snickers for dessert.

ILONA: The fire was awesome. I took off my soaking shoes and socks and placed them near the fire. I took off my outer layers of (soaking) clothing, wrung them out, and put them on again feeling much lighter. I managed to convince Yoav to do the same, then unfortunately put his socks too close to the flames and burned some holes in the toes (Sorry Yoav!). I guess it was hotter than I thought.

YOAV: When we first arrived at the cave, I looked for a drip that I could put a water bottle under to collect some water for the night. Unfortunately there weren't any obvious seeps. By the time dinner was done an hour later, however, the dry bivy spots that we had planned to sleep in were a growing stream. The cave was filling with water before our eyes, and we began to consider the possibility that this canyon would flash flood while we slept. It was still raining. For the umpteenth time that day, we repacked the haulbags and shouldered our loads. The fire was quickly put out by smothering the burning logs in the stream that had formed two feet to the East of the fire pit. Walking out was reminiscent of sections of the Zion Narrows and we were glad to have on sandals as the trail wound its way through the middle of a rapidly moving stream. The sound of rushing water was all around, and again the experience felt totally surreal, as just two days ago we had hiked up this dry canyon stepping on boulders that were now three feet under water.

After several stream crossings, we finally got to higher ground and decided to make a run for the car. We were still in the clouds, so it was hard to tell how far we had to go, but judging from the approach it would be several hours. Scrambling and boulder-hopping, we descended down the drainage. After a few wrong turns, we found the trail to the Oak Creek Canyon trailhead, and were back at the car by 10pm. It certainly hadn't been our longest day out, but it was the wettest.

ILONA: One of the most pleasant points of any long backcountry trip is always returning to the car and changing into clean(er), comfortable clothing. This time, it was absolutely heavenly. Dry long underwear and a dry bed in the truck with only pruned-up feet and hands, and a really bad cramp in my back to remind me of where we were just a few hours ago.

YOAV: The next morning we feasted on the 99¢ breakfast at the Wild, Wild, West, and drove home via Amboy and 29 Palms to avoid the inevitable Vegas to LA traffic jam. As I type this, ropes, sleeping bags and bivy sacs are hung out to dry, Ilona's hands seem to have become permanently dirt covered, and my cell phone emits a strange burning odor when I try to charge it. By the way, I just got the pictures developed and I've got one with a waterfall in the same frame as the Cloud Tower. Amazing!