Red Rock Day 3: Back to Calico

For our third day we went back to Calico Basin and walked right instead of left.  This took us to the base of Cannibal Crag, an enormous freestanding boulder with a few beautiful lines on it.  It also had the most kid friendly belay area that we came across on the trip, with lots of safe areas for the non-climbers to explore.



We warmed up on You Are What You Eat (5.4 trad).  The route was secure and ate gear like candy, so after placing a few bomber "you'll fall but you won't die" pieces, Sam led it and filled in the gaps in the gear.  His first trad lead, made all the better by the crowd of college age sport climbers looking on.





We followed this up with Baseboy (sport 5.11 a/b), a vertical crimpy thing just to the left of You Are What You Eat.  Nice technical climbing on sharp little holds. I managed to get my 5.11 OS for the trip.

Around this time the helicopters started to show up...

They brought someone out of the hills on a stretcher and flew them to the road where a second air ambulance took them off.  Quite the scene, with 3 separate helicopters and a dozen police/fire/ems vehicles on sight.  I've looked all over for info on what happened, but haven't seen any details. Kind of assume it was a hiker as climber injuries tend to get talked about online.

Feeling a bit more mortal, we hopped on What's Eating You (5.10a) around the back side of the boulder.  Fun climbing, but nothing particularly special.

Finally, we had to get our hero photos on Caustic Cock (5.11b).  I came super, super close to getting it without a fall, but didn't have the arm juice left to make the crux move without knowing the beta.  Took a couple good whips before figuring out that there was a jug hiding a couple inches farther up the wall if I really committed to the move.  Sam flashed it on toprope.

We both looked kinda cool against the sky in photos.










Ida was happy to spend the whole day with a filthy bunny.