... then I tried to kill him... wait, he tried to kill me... no, we tried to kill each other... (part four: Frogland...)

Final Day: our assault on Frogland. This is a "gem" of the Red Rocks Area - technically 7 pitches of "spicy" 5.8 climbing to the top. It sees long lines and good climbers all day long in a shaded corner of the park. A recommended climb, most people make a 5 am ascent start time like our friends Chris and Elaine. Robb and I didn't get going till closer to 9:30. :D

After a little bit of route finding on the dirt roads to get to the climb, and then a 30 minute hike in, Robb and I reach the base of Frogland. We were pretty excited - Chris and Elaine were up high, nearly finishing the climb. There was another party a few pitches up but things looked clear for Robb and myself - no queue.

We lazily took our time gearing up, peeing, flaking the rope, peeing, stashing our gear, peeing some more, drinking some water, and then marking our territory some more. Somewhere between peeing the first time and the last time, we heard a screeching voice from above: "rock... rock... ROCK...". Robb and I quickly made ourselves as small a target as possible, huddled under a tiny roof a couple feet besides us and pressed ourselves against the rock wall (note: falling objects from above tend to bounce and skitter AWAY from the wall... "tend to".... ). After a few moments, I didn't hear the classic shattering sounds of rock breaking into pieces or the metallic ring of aluminum climbing gear crashing down from a 500' fall. A bit confused, we later discovered that Elaine had accidentally dropped one of her shoes from close to top of the climb and it miraculously landed on the trail. We made sure to make it more conspicuous by putting an empty gatorade bottle with a bright orange cap into the shoe :). <--- good samaritans.

Robb leads the first pitch. For the most part, no problems... 'cept that our topo is a piece of !@$!#!@!^$%!!!!! Robb misunderstands the route map that we had, climbs PAST where he was supposed to build his anchor. He was a little concerned when just as he clips a piece into the rope, I yell out "Robb!!! 20 FEET!!!". Robb looked up and realized that a large ledge was coming, but he could only reach it with 25'. So, to make a long story short, he made sure he was secure, and yelled out to me that i needed to climb 5 feet of the "route" onto a large ledge and belay him from there. Excitment! So basically so far today, Robb nearly killed himself.

I reach him at his belay ledge 200' above me (but not without making a bloody mess out of myself by tearing part of my nail off while climbing), take the gear and head up the next pitch. It was slow and plodding for the most part. The key moment of the pitch when I had to figure out where to build my anchor. Once again, I stupidly consulted our topo and mistakenly built the belay anchor about 20' right of where we were supposed to be in a tangled bushy ledge. I didn't realize this while I was building my anchor out of a sapling in a crach backed up with a #2 cam.

Robb follows me, we consult the topo and realize that we're off route. Robb has to climb up and through the tangled branches of some of the tree-lings on our ledge, step out onto a blank slab and traverse 20' with only a small #00 TCU to protect him at the beginning of the traverse.

But this all has to happen after he moves that loose rock he dislodged. Yes - Robb's first move is to step on a big torso sized rock below the sapling as his foothold. As soon as he puts weight on it, it promptly pulls out and we both struggle to keep it in place as he regains his footing. The next 5 minutes is spent with both of us struggling to make space on this cramped belay ledge to find and move the rock to a secure spot where it wouldn't go crashing down on the people below us.

Oh yeah - forgot to mention, that people have started to climb below us and are practically speed climbing up the route. They climb the 300' it took us 2 or 3 hours to do in just over an hour. That's not putting pressure on us... <---- sarcasm.

So anyways, after Robb struggles to barely lift and carry this block of rock to a secure spot, he starts the traverse through the branches and onto the slab - using a patch of DIRT where the rock used to be as his first foothold. Crazy Alaskan...

Meanwhile, as Robb is making move after move through the slab, I nervously glance at the anchor. The sapling looked good and healthy - I've built (and rappeled!) off of saplings smaller than what I had. But now the roots were in a dirt patch that was now no longer held in place by the missing block that we dislodged. hrm. Not to mention that the #2 cam was placed in a similar looking block in the same crack. Double hrm. I came to the conclusion that the anchor would probably hold.. but just in case, if Robb takes a swinging lead fall, 20' to the left of me onto his #00 TCU, I decided to make a leap off of my belay ledge, and use another sapling / tree/shrub to my left as a fulcrum point between the energy of Robb's fall and my own fall, all the while having to time it just right so I don't land on the other ledge 10' below me and crush my ankles. What I want to know is: what drunken vegas climber came up with this topo? "I'm going to dress up like a climber, make a manky anchor, and go BALLS DOWN A CLIFF FACE. Ja! Dat would be fun!" (please note: at this point, Obi has nearly tried to kill Robb again... and arguably himself).

Fortuantely, my dynamic belay didn't have to be used. Robb cruised up this climb (although I didn't realize till later that he didn't place any more pro for 40' due to potential rope drag...). The other party is basically on top of us and I follow Robb to a secure, yet sketchy looking anchor. He missed the next belay station and built his own. Admittedly, it was a nice ledge, but the placements were poor (read: scary). (Robb has arguably nearly killed both of us again).

The next pitch had the section that Robb wanted to do: tunnel beneath a large chockstone boulder wedged into a gully / 4' wide crack. I gave Robb this lead since he's starting to pick up speed and find his rhythm... while I was losing mine and quickly becoming tired and low energy. Robb happily took the lead and raced up, placing as little pro as possible... err... placing pro in a safe and efficient manner. (Robb has nearly killed no one here... *whistling innocently*)

The final 150' pitch went fast. Robb took this lead that amounted to about 100' of Fifth class climbing with about 50' of 4th class scrambling. With the light failing, we put our approach shoes on, wrapped up the ropes and nearly ran down the descent trail back to our packs and to our car. By the time we were on the road, it was completely dark. A good way to end the weekend, me thinks.

All in all, I think Robb and I nearly killed each other plenty of times and we left Nevada feeling nothing but the warm exhausted glow of hatred for each other. I was tempted in reminding him why he should hate me so much by driving through the Strip again and beholding all that Vegas has to offer. I figured I should do that next time, when his fishing knife wasn't in arms' reach (stupid knife).