Burnt by the Sun — Solar Slab

Near epic in the shadow of Las Vegas…

You know when you’ve climbed hard when the thumbprint lock on your cell phone doesn’t work anymore. I kept placing my thumb and getting the “try again” text. Apparently my fingerprint had rubbed off enough to no longer register. This, after our epically heinous attempt of Solar Slab.

Chad and I had made plans a few months previous to climb this 14 pitch monster called Solar Slab (9 pitches, but with an initial 5 pitches to get to Solar Slab) in Red Rock, Nevada. I had my reservations — which continued throughout the climb. Some reservations were:

• First multi-pitch trad climb — for both of us.
• First time setting up a trad anchor
• First time for Chad to trad — at all
• First time for Chad to set a cam

Lot of firsts. And we were planning to climb a 14 pitch monster — sight unseen. I had bought trad books, a DVD on how to climb trad, a complete rack, and actually climbed a few single pitch trad climbs to dial it all in. Chad, as far as I could tell, just indoor sport climbed.

‘I’m going to push myself to do a training fall at least once every gym session in where I touch the anchor and fall!’