Red Rock Canyon, Las Vegas, NV

While I was in Vegas, I made a trip out of the city to visit Red Rock canyon. It happened to be Veteran's Day weekend, which was one of the national parks free weekend, an added bonus.

I didn't have my climbing gear, so I couldn't take advantage of the climbing. But I did explore the red canyon a bit.

View from visitors center

The first stop we made was at Calico II

At the High Point Overlook of the drive, Las Vegas in the background

Also took a walk along Lost Creek trail to one of the waterfalls, but it was barely dripping. The hike details can be seen at the bottom of this post.

No falling water today

La Jolla Cove

The day after Christmas I made my way over to La Jolla Cove outside of San Diego, CA. It was pretty crowded and parking was a premium. I was lucky and found a spot right next to this little beach that was covered in seals.

 Looking down from where I parked

 View down on the beach with the sea cliffs in the distance

As we walked down towards the cove there was this single seal on this rock. It was still for a while and almost looked like a statue.

 There were plenty of pelicans, seals and some crazy people in and around the water. Some people had full wet suits, while others were in just bikinis. I did not get in the water on this trip. 58 degrees is a little cold for me, and I did not come prepared.

We turned around at "Sunny Jim" cave. It looks like an inviting cliff jump, enough so that they have a sign forbidding it. No Lele Kawa on this trip.

-James

Lele Kawa

Biking near Yuma Dec 4th

Went out biking again. For the first time there were other people over there. As I pulled up there was a guy finishing up his day of riding. I guess I'm still the only idiot that rides in Yuma at one in the afternoon.

Since it was a nice cool day I rode a lot further than my last few rides. I did over 30 miles. I took the trail I road down last week up all the way to the top of the range, and just kept following the trails north. Then I headed down on a trail back to the canal. The canal road was the worst part of the ride, I should have just road the single track I rode up back the where I started. The canal road wasn't strait and just very boring and I was already getting tired. I should have stayed on the far side of the canal. It would have been a strait shot back to the parking area. Maybe next time.

The map below show most of the route. The app was having glitches in the beginning of the ride so the track doesn't show up right, from the parking lot to the first photo. I think some of the pictures from this ride are pretty good. No video this time.

Exploring the Valley of the Moon

No rock climbing here in Yuma, but looking online there were some suggestions to go to Valley of the Moon in CA. Of the three places around Yuma to climb all about 90 minutes drive away, this is the one that had the most info about it.

I picked up a rock climber I barely knew and loaded with my iPad with maps and info from Rockclimbing.com we headed out. Missed the dirt road heading up there at first but after reviewing the map managed to find it. The first two miles aren't too bad if you have a high clearance SUV or truck. At the two mile point you hit a fork in the road. The road heading down to the valley is pretty bad. Two bad for my stock truck to handle.

After parking the truck we hiked in the cold about a mile to the first rock climbing area, tombstone. There were some other climbers there working the sport routes there. So we looked around for some other routes. There was a lot of choss, so it was hard to find any other routes to climb.

We tried a little bouldering, then found a nice little trad crack route. By the time we were done on that crack the sun was heading behind the mountains, so we called it a day, even though we hadn't got much climbing in. The trails and sights were pretty awesome, even if the climbing wasn't.