The evening before we packed and planned for the biggest outing of the trip: The Original Route on the Rainbow Wall. The Rainbow Wall is a beautiful 1,000’ face that graces a beautiful cirque, topping out at 7,000’. For us mortals at least, this route would require an absolute 100% effort. The route is guarded by a steep two-hour approach hike and then follows an amazing system of corners and cracks nearly straight up for 13 pitches. The pitches go free at 11c, 11d, 11a, 11b, 10c, 10a, 8, 8, 11d/12a, 12a, 11b, and 10b. Yowza. This was going to be hard for an old Q-tip like me!
A couple of years ago, I went up to do the Original Route
with my friend Dick but I decided to bail on the second pitch when three yahoos came up behind us
French-freeing asking when they could pass before even reaching us, right when
I was in the crux of the pitch. This
really blew my concentration when I needed it most. I really didn’t want to attempt a route at my
limit with a bunch of distractions, so we bailed and went over to do The
Nightcrawler instead... Anyway, back to
the present – Mark and I had the entire Rainbow Wall to ourselves and the
temperatures were actually quite nice thanks to a thin layer of high clouds. :)
Mark did a really good job leading the first two
pitches with only one quick taint as he grabbed a draw to clip in the rope in a
very strenuous section. I barely followed the pitch cleanly. 
I congratulated Mark on his excellent effort on the
sharp end. That 11D pitch is a serious
pumper! I led the next two 5.11 pitches which were thankfully a fair bit easier
and that put us at the base of the 5.10 corner pitches. 
At this belay, it was cool to check out the really old bolts
that had been placed during the first ascent in 1973 by Chiloe/Larry Hamilton
and Joe Herbst. I took some photos of the bolts and after returning home, sent
them to Larry. He confirmed that yes, indeed, they were the originals he placed
40 years ago. Pretty cool!
Mark combined the two 5.10 pitches and soon enough we were
on a nice ledge taking a quick break.
Doing the Original Route free is quite a treat logistically
as the rack is pretty small and you can descend with a single 70 meter rope.
Hence, we traveled light – just our climbing gear, three liters of water, and
five or six food bars. The next 300’ or so is comparatively easy 5.8 climbing
that takes one up then over to the base of the crux red dihedral pitches. Here there is about 800’ of vertical drop
straight to your packs at the base. Above lies about 250’ of climbing including
the two hardest pitches on the route.
To give us the best chance of free-climbing the next few
pitches, we ate a bar, tanked up on fluids and left the camelback at the belay
to lighten the load.
I led the first red dihedral pitch which involves extremely
technical stemming then somewhat easier climbing on the rest of the pitch. The
crux section was baffling at first, with virtually no holds in this vertical
corner. I couldn’t make myself commit to the crux moves even with the bolt just
two or three feet below my waist, so I aided up one move on the bolt and
pre-placed a high cam. Although
obviously a taint, I was pretty tired by now and it was just the best I could
do at this point. I lowered down to a no hands rest below the crux, rested a
couple of minutes, and then tenuously pressed into the bizarre stemming moves.
Seriously, the left foothold was the size of a bb and the right wall was
essentially blank. I’m not quite sure how you stay on the thing, but after a
few feet, I was able to reach a good hold in the corner! The crux of this pitch, at least, was over.
The rest of the pitch is probably 5.10C/D and continues up
the beautiful corner to a belay. I
cringed at the thought of Alex Honnold free-soloing this route a few years ago
– simply amazing. Mark followed the pitch fairly quickly and
with no falls, firing off the stemming crux first-try! Excellent work!
At the belay, Mark racked for the next crux pitch, took a
breather and headed up. This pitch is
hard! Right off the belay is a weird stem-press kind of thing onto some tiny
holds. And from there it just gets harder with reachy, powerful lay-backing up
the thin corner. Then the crack in the
corner pinches off and one is forced into another bizarre series of stemming
maneuvers followed by committing face climbing to the belay.
Mark had to take a couple of rests on this pitch, but he did
an excellent job – better than I could have done for sure. Excellent work MC!
I started following the pitch and realized by the grunts I
was making and the cramping in my forearms, it was at (or above) my limit. I climbed with desperate movement and thought
I might just be able to pull it off - when I fell out of the weird stemming
section about ¾ of the way up the pitch. After a short rest, I was able to
finish the pitch but just barely. We
were both hammered!
The next pitch was a pretty steep 11b face and corner
climbing that starts off with some funky down-climbing and traversing. I was
low on mojo by now, so the pitch felt hard right from the start. I was really
tired but we really wanted this climb! I
pushed on and was barely able to finish, the 5.9 layback at the top nearly
pitched me off! I happily rolled into a cave like belay feature below the final
pitch.
I was spent!
Mark did a great job and seconded the pitch quickly and in
good style. I gladly handed him the gear for the final 5.10 pitch to the
summit. As Mark jammed out the roof
above me and got into a corner system, he yelled down “It’s over!” Yeah! :)
A few minutes later, I was seconding the last pitch and
continued up past Mark to the amazing views on the summit of Rainbow
Mountain. It was about 5:15pm – we’d
been on the move about 11.5 hours at this point. Mark scrambled up to the summit
and we posed for some hero shots on top.
Both of us agreed this was one of the top five free climbs
we’d ever done. Although we couldn’t climb the whole thing clean on-sight, we
gave it all we had, so no regrets. Larry
and Joe did a great job putting up perhaps the finest line in Red Rocks. It
really is a fantastic route. We hung out
on the summit for about 15 minutes, but there were many rappels and the long
hike out ahead of us. The descent went smoothly and before we knew it we were
eating a snack at the base and prepping for the hike out. A half-moon had risen
and was now perfectly situated above the Rainbow Wall. It was a beautiful sight
for sure.
The two-hour hike went well, and again we enjoyed cans of
tea that we’d stashed on the way in. We got to the car shortly after dark
giving us just over 15 hours car-to-car.
We were both super-tired but really psyched to have done the Rainbow
Wall. It was an amazing day for sure!
The next day we took our time packing up the car and started
the long drive home. My hands were
cramping just driving. Obviously the Rainbow Wall took everything we had. It
was great to get home to see CG and relax a bit. CG and I went for a nice bird walk that
afternoon and the next day I returned to the harsh reality of life in the
cube-farm... Rainbow Wall – DO IT! :)
