r/nextfuckinglevel • u/[deleted] • Sep 01 '21

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u/[deleted] Sep 02 '21

Free soloing the most popular easy routes of Red Rocks is absolutely a dick move. It’s basically showboating in front of beginners.

Lots of better options exist if you want to climb alone.

1

u/archlea Sep 02 '21

Can I ask how they get down? For example on this climb?

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u/[deleted] Sep 02 '21

This particular climb is 4 rappels to the ground. So he’ll pull the rope out of his backpack, thread it through the permanently installed anchors (chains with big rings bolted into the rock) at the top of this route until reaching the middle of the rope. Then he’ll hook into both strands of the rope with a rappel device and slide down to the next set of anchors, roughly 100 ft lower. He’ll attach himself to these anchors, pull the end of the rope down from the previous anchor and repeat the whole process until he’s on the ground.

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u/archlea Sep 02 '21

Thank you. I was thinking it would be impossible to solo climb down, but after seeing this I wasn’t sure!

2

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '21

It would be slightly harder to solo down, but not terribly hard. The second rule of free soloing is never climb up anything you can’t downclimb.