In early 2019, while teaching university geology in Southern California, I made two trips to Red Rock National Conservation Area. Local wise man and climbing historian Larry DeAngelo convinced me to investigate First Creek Canyon for new route opportunities.

On January 9, my wife, Giselle, and I completed a long, independent route on a seldom-visited rock tower known as Bearclaw Spire to climbers and White Pinnacle Peak to scramblers. Our line starts up the single-pitch route Wellington Finds Walloon Brabant (5.8, Custer-Saulnier, 2018) and soon passes a tree with a bail sling. The pitch above is a thin, soft crack with 5.9 moves above micro-nuts. From there, the crack becomes an ironclad splitter as it charges up and around an arête. For the sixth pitch, our route joins an unknown route (with bolted anchors) that traverses far to the left below our crux seventh pitch: a heinous roof crack (5.10d) into a bombay chimney. We then made our way up and over a feature we called Red Pinnacle and finished with two pitches on the summit pinnacle of Bearclaw itself, joining the route Dirtbagger’s Compensation (III 5.10a, Petro-Pollari, 1993) for the final 50’.

We named our route Dirtbag Geologist (1,040’, 11 pitches, III 5.10d) in honor of recently retired professor and authentic dirtbag geologist Ernie Duebendorfer, who was one of my grad-school mentors and, more importantly, contributed a good chunk of his career to research in the Las Vegas region.

On April 19, Giselle and I teamed up with Larry to pursue an objective that had been in the back of his mind for many years: the seemingly unclimbed Slippery Peak, a small subsidiary summit jutting out of the complex north face of Indecison Peak.

Since his route Leviathan (III 5.9, DeAngelo-Duncan, 2009) had dead-ended below the summit, Larry suggested we try the obvious north-facing corner system to the right. The first pitch had movable plates and was deemed sketchy even by Scary Larry’s standards. The next pitch finished with a wild hand traverse (5.10a) on which Larry slipped and took a huge swinging fall while following. Two moderate pitches led to a notch in the ridge, from which we were able to scramble (4th class) to the summit. We built a cairn and descended the west gully via scrambling and three rappels. Larry suggested the name Plate Tectonics (630’, 6 pitches, III 5.10a).

On April 21, Steve Stosky (Canada) and I endured the heinous three-hour approach to the Basin Wall on the southeast aspect of Mt. Wilson. Our objective was the prominent yet difficult to access right-leaning crack on the right side of the wall, which had been attempted at least once prior (AAJ 2017). It was after noon when at last we got off the ground, using a subtle line of thin cracks just right of the main system. We eventually gained the system via four pitches of airy arêtes and cracks up to 5.10a. From this point, four more pitches of moderate ramp climbing led us to the notch just north of the southeast summit of Mount Wilson. I sprinted up the final easy section with Steve hollering from the ridge top that I was liable to miss the final rays of sun if I didn’t step on it. The Canadian Route (1,200, 8 pitches, IV 5.10a) is the second known route on the Basin Wall and, like the first, Trial & Terror (IV 5.9, Duncan-Gomoll, 2008), it is a rather serious undertaking at the grade.

– Derek Field, Canada