Dr. Alan Oram, practicing self-rescue at Cannibal Crag, just outside Red Rocks
My rock course begins tomorrow, here in Red Rocks, just west of Vegas. It’s still hot (90s all week!) and dry, but the weather folks say we might cool down a bit.
Most of us arrived a few days early, including my buddy Mike Arnold. He’s a sponsored Rab athlete and a fun guy with whom to train. He introduced me to a few of the guys from his ski course who’d rolled into to town…and we get down to business. We spent a day practicing self-rescue and did two long routes together.
Self-rescue techniques involve raising, lowering, and assisting an injured, incapacitated, or exhausted climber–essential techniques for guiding. The tools aren’t necessarily complicated, but implementing them in safe, efficient ways can be a challenge. Everybody seems pretty dialed thus far, but exam stress often gets the better of us…so we practiced again this morning.
We’ve done a couple beautiful routes, too. Dream of Wild Turkeys is a crack and face climb (5.10) up the imposing Black Velvet Wall. There’s a bit of crack climbing, some really nice face climbing on the typical elephants’ ears and flakes of Red Rocks’ sandstone. Seven pitches, then three (four?) rappels…and most of the stances are “hanging”, meaning there’s no ledge on which to stand, just two or three bolts drilled into the rock and one hangs in one’s harness (yes, it gets old by day’s end).
We also trained a day on Ginger Crack (5.9), a varied and aesthetic climb above Juniper Canyon. The route poses some interesting challenges for a guide (loose rock, a brushy 4th-class pitch, and a challenging descent to three double-rope rappels), as well as being fun.
Part of the enjoyment from doing guides courses is seeing how other guides work, as well as just getting to meet a generally fun bunch of people. I’ve been happy to get to know Elad Omer, a Boulder local, who climbs really, really well (5.13 on gear) and has a relaxed disposition. I’m hoping some of his crusher strength rubs off on me!
Tomorrow we begin the course with a day of exams–first, the “rescue drill”, during which one must rescue a client who’s incapacitated. Each candidate is allotted 45 minutes to hold the client’s fall, tie off the belay and escape it, then perform a raise, a lower, and then a counterbalance rappel to an intermediate anchor. At that anchor the guide must transfer him(her)self and the client onto the anchor (without the client’s assistance). Then the duo rappels to the ground as either a tandem, or pre-rigged (occasionally a counterbalance) rappel. Forty-five minutes goes quickly if you blow it!
Along with the rescue drill is a “knot pass”, which simply means the guide lowers the client on a rope, encounters a knot in the middle of the rope and has to “pass” the knot around his belay device/method. Again, straightforward techniques, but it requires attention to detail and efficiency.
Finally, we’ll do a “movement exam”, which puts each of us on a 5.10+ trad route and we have to onsight it…
Wish me luck!
