Las Vegas is a pretty logical start/end point for our West Coast road trip – not least because there’s a direct flight (outbound at least) from Manchester. Red Rocks is better known as a winter climbing destination, but we’d hoped to spend a few days in the vicinity at the start of our trip as it happened to coincide with Jane, Andy, Jesse and Molly being in town. Unfortunately, 43C (or 105 degrees as they say in these parts) is barely conducive to survival, let alone climbing! Crazy temps for October!

Mount Charleston, with camping and climbing at 7-8,000ft is only 45mins out of town but 5,000ft higher, and offered some respite and an opportunity to re-plan. Perhaps “plan” would be more accurate – we’ve got some vague ideas of places we’d like to visit, but usually end up on a random-walk itinerary, steered by weather and events. The present heatwave is a good example of the best of plans not surviving a first encounter with events.

Great campground with stunning views of a whole lotta limestone!

You could almost walk to Blue Sky Bluff, but on our first afternoon in the country we treated ourselves to the one mile drive. 10mins easy walk up to the small, shady crag. Nothing to write home about (he says, writing home about it!) but Free Flying is Neither was a fun YECTOYD 5.8 on brilliant featured rock.

Cathedral Rock is home to a far more extensive set of crags, from single pitch to big adventure routes. The access situation is a bit confusing, with signs for closure and dire warnings (6 months imprisonment – REALLY?!) We bumped into some other climbers who told us to just ignore it, and we’re currently not in custody!

It’s a well maintained trail up until you break off for the final crag approach.

We started off at Chert Locker, an amazingly featured slabby wall split by chert bands. The half dozen routes are only up to 5.6 but feel a bit spicier with some questionable rock.

Worth a visit though. Here’s Helen on Chertnobyl.

A bit of bushwacking enables you to access the Sonar sector on Echo Wall, which had quite a crowd in attendance.

Disaster Dog, 10d, and Squeeze Play, 11a, were both really good crimp-fests, and Helen enjoyed Chaotic Cannine, 5.8.

Meanwhile we’d hatched a plan to relocate to the more “Alpine” environment of Idyllwild and took in another high-altitude Vegas spot on the way: Mount Potosi.

Despite the elevation and northerly aspect, it was still roasting, and we limited ourselves to the roadside attractions of the lower Comedy Crags. A couple of stiff 5.9s They’re All Going to Laugh at You and The Most Powerful Clown, and a 10+ fail on I’ll be Here When It All Gets Weird. Here’s Helen on It Gets Worse, 5.7

Heading down the hill, you can just about make out the super-sized madness of The Strip. Time to head south.

Looking for another stopover that combined a high altitude campground with some drive-by, journey-breaking cragging, the combined powers of Mountain Project and the Recreation.gov app yielded Beale St Wall on the outskirts of Kingman, Arizona. The camping on Hualapai Mountain was pleasantly cool, but TBH the climbing was more drive-ON-by than drive-by,

but did tick the YECTOYD box.

As a bonus, those readers who are steeped in American culture will have spotted that Kingman is one of the way points mentioned in the Chuck Berry classic, Route 66, and falls beyond the finish point of our road trip homage from 2015 https://rockaroundtheworld.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/route-66-roadtrip-6-11s-across-the-usa.pdf As our onward journey would also take us through Barstow and San Bernadino, we’d finally have settled one piece of unf business.

Time to hit the Interstate…

Absolutely no point in stopping at Joshua Tree (the heat would be suffocating) but we acknowledged our passage with the album on full blast.

We didn’t stop at Hayfield either – there’s no way it could live up to the real thing.

Idyllwild here we come!