After work I headed east to Reno where I met up with Randy. I left my car at his apartment complex and we headed out together for our overnight drive to Red Rocks. The drive was long - longer than both of us expected. Finally, around 6:30a (9 hours later) we rolled into Las Vegas (LV).

We drove through LV and managed to meet up with Ritwik, Vlad, and Adi at the campground. Vlad flew in from Seattle and both Ritwik and Adi drove down from Sunnyvale. The three of them headed off to Pine Creek Canyon to climb Ginger Cracks. Randy I laid out a tarp and our sleeping bags in an attempt to gain an hour or so of rest before the POCers began to arrive.

At 9:00a we picked up Ryan and Derick from the airport. All of us were super hungry so we headed out to find some food only to learn that nothing opens until 11:00a. We found a sub place that was open and then agreed to head back toward the canyon for some afternoon mountain biking while we waited for the remainder of the POCers to arrive. Derick rented a bike and Ryan borrowed Randy's beater bike. We drove to the trailhead at Cottonwood Valley and started out on some easy-moderate singletrack. Not long into our ride we came across a distressed father hovering over his son. The boy had crashed which caused him to go unconscious and quit breathing. He was just starting to come around as we arrived. Randy rode back to call 911 (to no avail because cell signal in the area was spotty). Ryan rode back to coordinate cars once he saw the boy was revived. Derick and I remained with the father and son to help however we could. After about 20-30 minutes the boy was sitting up, standing up, walking around and eventually pushing his own bike as Derick and I walked with him back to his dad's car. Since he was feeling better, the dad opted not to have an ambulance come out and instead would take him to the hospital himself. Quite a scary situation - something you never want to come across - but we were relieved it wasn't as bad of a scenario as it could have been. Once we saw the father and son off we remounted our bikes and finished up our ride.

By mid-afternoon we returned Derick's rental bike and drove to the Pine Creek Canyon to hike around and maybe come across Ritwik, Vlad, and Adi on their way out from a fun successful climb. We never came across them, but Randy and I saw two wild burros instead! They were literally 15' from each of us. Very neat.

We headed back from hiking and drove by the campground for a brief visit with the newly arrived POCers (Julie, Joe, Dave, and Noah). But we didn't stay long because we had to be at the airport by 7:50p to pick up Brian and Nell. We drove The Strip so I could see LV in its full flair. The time it took to do this thwarted our plans of eating dinner at the Luxor buffet prior to heading to the airport. We bypassed the Luxor and waited on Brian and Nell at the airport ... and waited ... and waited ... and waited. We waited well over an hour and a half before giving in to the pain of our hungry bellies. We were just entering the parking garage of the Luxor when Nell finally called. Their plane had been delayed getting out of Indianapolis. We drove back to the airport and met them at Thrifty car rental; after all, all this waiting for Nell and Brian was so Derick could be the second driver/signer on the rental car. Once that business was taken care of, we had 30 minutes to get to Luxor before they closed their buffet at 11:00p. Derick, Ryan, Randy and I stuffed our faces w/ what remained at the buffet and finally made it back to the campsite just after midnight. Randy and I hadn't really slept since Thursday night (other than a few catnaps in the car and an hour rest Saturday morning) so we REALLY welcomed the chance to sleep.

Sunday morning Randy and I took our sweet time waking up. The POCers took off for Black Corridor and we caught up an hour later. What a fun place! The POCers had put up and taken down a few routes before we arrived but I still managed to get in 6 routes for the day. Randy took some time to get in his adventure race training and rode the 16 mile loop that traverses the inside edge of the Red Rock horseshoe. Through the course of the afternoon I climbed Crude Behavior (5.9), Crude Street Blues (5.9), Lewd, Crude, and Misconstrued (5.9+), Livin' on Borrowed Time (5.11c), Black Gold (5.10b), and Rebel Without a Pause (5.11a), although I didn't get all the way up the 5.11a.

We wrapped up the afternoon around 5:00p and saw off Ritwik and Adi for their 8 hour drive back to Sunnyvale. The rest of us took off for the local grocery stores to get some fixins for grillin' and birthday bashin' (at least 5 of us have spring birthdays)! The evening was great. The grills were crowded with everything from hobo dinners, brats, hamburgers, chicken, and tuna steaks. We even got to celebrate the birthdays with a chocolate birthday cake and candles! Afterwards, we gathered 'round the campfire that Joe so masterfully engineered and traded stories, reminisced, and simply reveled in the moment - a reunion of POCers, young and old, current and alumni.

One by one we retired to our sleeping bags for the night. Sleeping was pretty rough as strong gusty winds breezed through our sleeping bags and flapped the tents' rainflies. Needless to say, sleep was hard to come by as most of the night was spent huddling deeper and deeper inside our sleeping bags to stave off the cold and endless dust and sand that pelted everything in sight.

Randy and I woke up early. We said good-bye to all the POCers and headed out for our long return drive to Reno. After a brief stop at a local McDonalds for some food and a quick spit bath we were on our way.

It was nice to get to see everything we cruised by in the middle of the night on the way down. We drove north along US 95 with gazetteer in hand to point out all the mountain ranges and any other interesting features. We noticed the progression from Yucca plants and Joshua Trees to sagebrush as we drove north and gained elevation. We got to see Indian Springs Air Force Base. We got to see the Army Ammunition Depot in Hawthorne. We also got to see Boundary Peak, the highest point in NV that we had summited 8 months earlier. Again, ten long windy hours later (we napped for 90 minutes in Tonopah) we arrived in Reno.

I was way too tired to make the final five hour drive back to Monterey, so I crashed at Randy's for seven hours of sleep before I headed home Tuesday morning.

Derick's photos
Julie's photos
Vlad's photos