Epinephrine 5.9, Black Velvet Canyon

Climbed on October 20, 2023. 

Fun Rating: Very Fun.

I struggled with this writeup, as what more needs to be said about one of the most climbed routes in one of the most popular climbing destinations in the country? Epinephrine is the main reason a good number of people come to Red Rock Canyon to climb, and is currently #3 on Mountain Projects “20 Classic Climbs” list. Larry and Bill have an entire chapter in Red Rock Odyssey dedicated to the climb, and are much more eloquent in their descriptions of the challenges and triumphs of climbing than I can aspire to be. So, instead of detailing an epic we didn’t experience, waxing lyrically about how meaningful a route it was, or giving yet another pitch-by-pitch rundown no one needs I submit to you the following stream of consciousness:

Blast-off.

It’s been a long time since I’ve asked for a take while climbing on gear, and I was going to be damned if it was going to be in the middle of the long chimney pitch on Epinephrine. What would I tell all of my friends? The ones who know me as a chimney guy. The ones who know about the Herbst Tour and my quixotic dream to have climbed all of the same pitches as one of the great founders of the place I’ve grown to love more than any other. Shame, and rising panic, were beginning to fill a familiar space in my chest. 

This was supposed to be fun for me. I wasn’t supposed to be scared and tired like so many other people had described in the posts and comments that I’d read, scouring them for information like some ancient augur hoping that day’s flock of birds would tell them something no one had been told, or something no one had listened to yet.

Some concern.

I remember looking down at my partner, embarrassed that I wasn’t living up to the story I had for myself. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. My foot had slipped on my first step off of the belay ledge, and that sense of insecurity had plagued me for the entirety of the pitch so far. I found myself pressing my left shoulder a little too hard into the back wall, and my feet a little too hard into the front. My sun shirt, unneeded so far, was sticking to the rock and making progress more challenging than I’d hoped as well. The excuses and little anxieties were building up faster than I could stop them. “Zak, take,” it would be so easy to say, “take, take, take, take…” and so on with rising volume and need until I felt the comforting weight of safety pulling up at my hips and sucking me towards my cam. 

The sting of tears in the corner of my eyes began to blur the rock in front of me. “Fuck, fuck this, I fucking hate this,” and with that mantra I scraped higher. Shame and embarrassment were anger now, and I was going to be damned if I was going to make more of a fool of myself than these pauses and deliberations had made of me already. The rest of the pitch went by in a series of vague curses, epithets, and minor slips. By the time I made it up the last small stretch of offwidth I was truly exhausted, perhaps more emotionally than physically. I had almost thrown up at the top of the Fox when I had done that pitch, and I felt similarly thin and used up now.

Zak above the chimneys.

We climbed fast from there, trying to make up the time I had lost during my tribulation in the climb’s maw. I hated how much fun I was having now that we were face climbing again. This wasn’t the part of the climb I was supposed to be enjoying most. Pitch after pitch of lovely terrain gave way to scrambling and then suddenly I was giving my partner a hip belay under the famous pine at the top of the route. A woodpecker gently tapped above my head and provided a kind of metronome for still meditation. As it hopped from branch to branch, quietly and softly knocking at the wood, I realized I had lost something on the route and remained unsure of what it was precisely, but keenly felt its lack. As Zak made his way up the long ramp that led to the emergency cache next to me at the top of the route, I screwed on a brave face and pushed that feeling down for later. We had another couple hours of hiking before we were back at the car, and I’d have more than enough time to wallow on the trudge back. 

As we hiked past a series of peaks, the broken and sun blasted tops of this desert alpine world lulled me into a sort of trance. Other than the occasional moment of confusion as we ledged out or chose the wrong side of a cairn, the miles quickly passed and suddenly we were approaching the parking lot, shared laughter in the air as a kind of balm against the various scrapes we carried with us both physical and esoteric. I still felt that heaviness in me, deep down and waiting for its opportunity to strike again. I may not have found precisely what I lost in that pitch, swallowed by stone and birthed alive but diminished at its end. Something else was in its place, though, quiet and small but unmissable when sought.

Zak towards the top.

Fun has three types, as it is commonly described amidst climbers. Type 1 is fun in the moment, type 2 is fun after the fact, and type 3 isn't fun until enough time has passed that you’ve convinced yourself it was actually type 2. I think that personal growth has those same three types as well, and I experienced the second kind on that pitch. I’m glad for having done it, and how it changed me, but I think I’ll follow on that pitch next time.

Happiness pre-walkoff.