2000+ vertical feet at Red Rocks, Nevada was our goal for the weekend. Not just getting up it, as I later found out – but getting down too.

Lonnie and I hiked to the base at night. As I fell asleep I could see the Black Tower rising above me – 3 pitches of sheer 5.9 chimney. Deep in the canyon where Epinephrine begins, the morning light comes late. By 6:30a, well past dawn I began leading the first pitch, a 5.8 bolted face. By 7:15 we were both staring up into the gaping maw of some 300’ of smooth chimney walls, the color of deep ochre. Woe to the second bringing up our Camelbak with a pathetically meager ration of water. I led the 5th and 7th pitches, worming my way up between the cool shaded rock, my Jammies chalkbag hanging from the back of my harness.

We burst out of the chimney and onto the top of the Black Tower around 11:30am. From there to the end of the climb we enjoyed some six or seven moderate pitches on beautifully varied terrain. Face, cracks, a sea of chickenheads, roofs. At 3:30p we finished the route with 700’ of 4th class scrambling to the summit. At 5p we stood at the top just as the sun was setting. Before us the beam of light from the Luxor, flung upwards into the night sky, marked the Strip of Las Vegas just 20 miles away.

We turned away from the view to begin our descent. An enormous cairn the size of a doghouse marked a trail. As the night fell upon us, we picked our way down the boulders of a narrowing gully. Suddenly Lonnie ahead of me stopped.

“Whoa,” he said, peering out into a black void. An anchor with slings tied around a chockstone told the story. “Guess we’re gonna rappel,” he said.

And with those words began our 7+ hour descent into hell.

By the second or third rap, the gully had narrowed into an 8-foot wide canyon with completely vertical grey walls rising on either side of us. On the third rap, the rope stuck when we tried to pull it down. ‘Maybe we won’t need it,” Lonnie ventured. Little did we know that ahead of us were seven more raps. Fortunately Lonnie was able to free it after ascending the other end.

And so we continued down our series of raps into an uncertain abyss. In the frigid vacuum of black space, with the repetition of rapping, it seemed as if time stood still and nothing before or after ever existed. At times we decided to forgo the rap, instead scrambling down short steep chimneys. Chimney after chimney after painful chimney. I had thought we were done with the dreaded chimneys after the Black Tower. Going up chimneys in daylight is one thing, going down chimneys at night without a rope is another.

The lights of Las Vegas disappeared behind a smaller peak as we continued to descend. We finally slid and scraped down one last chimney onto a wider slab where the gully opened up. Before us, we knew, was the valley floor. How far down, we had no idea. Would another rap take us there? No more rings or slings marking the passage of other wayward climbers showed us the way.

“Rock!” Lonnie yelled, pitching a large stone out over the cliff that halted us. We waited. “One one thousand two one thousand three...” Clunk. “Ok, d equals one half times t squared...” Lonnie muttered, but somehow our attempts to employ elementary physics equations didn’t seem comfortably accurate enough. “Rock!” he yelled again, tossing another hunk over the edge. Eventually after stumbling around on the slab, we talked about another rap.

“We could bivy here,” Lonnie said. “It would suck but we would live.”

“No way,” I protested. “We’re almost there, I know it. Let’s set up another rap, and I’ll go down and see what’s there. If the rope doesn’t make it all the way, I’ll ascend back up and we’ll bivy.”

I was bonking pretty hard. The water had run out while the sun was still up, leaving Lonnie in desperate thirst to slurp up fresh-looking pools in the canyon we descended. All we’d had to eat the whole day were a few powerbars. “One more rap,” I insisted. “Let me do it.”

Lonnie didn’t say anything. There was absolutely no way he was going to let me do it. He knew how many months I’d been climbing, and as the more experienced one there, he felt responsible for getting us down safely. So he set up an anchor around a scrawny tree and a boulder, and off he went over the edge. I watched the anchor to be sure it was solid, then his voice echoed – “Off rappel!” Relieved, I cleaned what I could of the anchor, leaving what were almost our last slings and biners, and slid down the rope to the valley floor – with maybe 5 feet of rope to spare. We just made it. No more raps, no more chimneys, no more scrambling. Just the hike out from the riverbed, under a starry sky.

12:30a – 10 raps and 7 hours after the summit, we sat, wordless and numb, in the car with the heater blasting on full. We guzzled H20 and swallowed whole chunks of tuna and then passed out on the front seat until a golden sunrise I was never happier to see woke us up.

Epinephrine cost us a myriad of slings, runners, and biners for the endless series of minimal rap anchors. Moreover, my grigri hung carelessly on an unlocked pear biner at the back of my harness. I think sometimd during those continuous chimneys on the descent, the whole setup had come off, left for some fortunate climber who will be unfortunately retracing our misguided steps.

But even after Epinephrine’s 5.9 chimneying and an epic descent, my Team Jammies chalkbag survived! I took a close inspection of it some days afterward. It seemed incredible, but the material looks hardly scruffed up. My fleece and my climbing pants have holes and tears, but after that climb, my chalkbag is still as good as new!