If you’re tuning into Rockaroundtheworld for Episode 13 of Bill and Dom’s Excellent Adventures, expecting vivid orange sandstone walls and towers, then you’re in for a disappointment (or at least a delay). The two protagonists duly arrived in Las Vegas, but sadly only accompanied by three of their four bags. The fourth bag, full of Bill’s gear, much cammage, all our wires and a rope (not to mention a tent!) decided to stop over in Frankfurt for a mini-break. Thank you EuroWings!

I guess a two-day stopover in Sin City isn’t the end of the world (though some might disagree) and when Hotels.com came up with Treasure Island “on deal” as our best bet for accommodation we started to perk up (having been awake for 24hrs).

Although I was disappointed to learn that the legendary reenactment of the pirate ship battle had finally sunk for the last time over ten years ago.

Next morning, whilst the view of The Strip was less spectacular, the backdrop of Red Rocks reinforced the bizarre juxtaposition of this extraordinary metropolis in the middle of the equally stunning desert.

Look a bit closer and you also catch site of Mount Charleston, a 12,000ft limestone mountain only 45mins from downtown Vegas.

With a bit of altitude, plenty of north facing shady cragging, and a short walk-in, it seemed like a decent first day option on a seriously scorching day – a High of 43C – especially as we’d need to wait for a gear shop to open to buy the minimum bits and bobs required until reinforcements arrived from Frankfurt. Plenty of time for a big calorie hit in the form of a stack of blueberry pancakes (you can’t really say you’ve cleared US immigration until you’ve had a short stack!)

Leaving behind 43C downtown, it was a much more bearable 27C and shady at the crag. We made a fairly random decision to head to Mary Jane Cliff (thank you Mountain Project!) – a dozen routes about 15m high in the 5.10-5.11 range.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a shot of Bill on Getting Better with Age, a 5.9/10, but here he is powering up Pine in the Arse, 10b – you choose which is more appropriate!

We did a couple of other routes, including a good arse-kicking on the eponymous route of the crag: Mary Jane, 11b. Blame the jet-lag, altitude heat or perhaps the pancakes (or maybe I’m just not very strong at the moment). Anyway, it’s a great area with a lot of rock to come back for.

Meanwhile, the AWOL bag has been tracked down but won’t be with us for another day. More temps in the 40s and a limited rack of cams but no wires, we settle on the world-classic Epinephrine, a 2,000ft 5.9 in Black Velvet Canyon, Red Rocks. This came on my radar one Christmas in Arizona, staying with our friends Jim and Jean, when two other house guests each recounted tales of epic benightments, one of which included a swim to escape having accidentally rapped into the wrong (flooded) canyon! A large part of that length is in a series of huge chimneys, which at least would offer some shade, and recently installed bolted belays would allow a rap descent after “only” 11 pitches (and avoid the epic descent).

Despite a 5am start the temperature in downtown Vegas was already in the upper 30s, and a random shower of rain and a distant lightning storm put the whole project in jeopardy, but as we started the last few miles of dirt track towards the Black Velvet trailhead, the weather prospects improved.

What was already an ambitious (foolhardy?) plan took a further setback us we unpacked the half set of cams that had so far made it stateside to find that in the final act of weight distribution I’d put almost all the big stuff in Bill’s (missing) bag. We were about to attempt the widest of wide routes with only 2 pieces bigger than an inch (one gold/2 and one grey/4). Hrmmm – it’d be an interesting walk and a useful recce if nothing else.

Hummingbirds, yellow Orioles and huge, vivid butterflies accompanied us up the boulder-filled wash, and at least we easily found the start of the route, marked by “the first set of bolts that you come across on the left side of the canyon”. The initial 5.8 slab at the start of the first pitch proved surprisingly challenging, and then the rest of the pitch didn’t make sense. A lot of head-scratching and a bit of bushwhacking rightwards along a ledge revealed some features which were more easy to reconcile with the topo, and we arrived at the first stance hot, bothered, and already behind schedule (the wall stays in the sun until mid-morning).

At least we were in the right place for pitch 2 and we were soon basking in the relative cool of the chimney with hundreds of feet of overhanging horror-show looming above.

Bill set off bravely up the crux pitch 3, armed with our pathetic depleted rack, but eventually determined that the final 50ft 5.9 chimney solo (right next to a Camalot #3-sized crack) was not a great idea (especially without any phone reception, no one else for miles and no one knowing where we were!)

To re-quote one of my much-used favourite phrases: time in reconnaissance is rarely wasted, and at least we got to identify the correct start (see photo below)

– as a further clue you are looking for expansion bolts rather than the glue-ins you come across first. In more good news, as soon as we were back in phone reception my email proclaimed that the errant bag had finally checked into Las Vegas Airport. Not the most auspicious start to Episode 13, and we were beginning to wonder if we should have bowed to suspicion and jumped straight to 14, but at least we were finally on the road to Zion with 10 days remaining to achieve the goals of a Wall and a Tower in Utah. Tune in for the next installment to see how we got on…