Over six days in early October, Lani Chapko and I completed The Red Rock Traverse (RRT). A couple of iterations of Red Rock traverses had been done in the past—including The HURT, an impressive ultra-running crossover by Alex Honnold in 2022—but a complete climbing traverse (more on what that means in a bit) had yet to be done. Kyle Willis suggested the possible link-up that would become the RRT in 2016, though timing and life prevented us from giving it an attempt.

Basically, there are 11 canyons that open to the east in Red Rock, defined by 12 ridgelines or peaks. Traversing north to south the idea would be to summit the high point of each ridgeline via a technical route on the north side, assuming that peak had a technical north face. It is certainly a bit contrived—you can hike and scramble the Keystone Thrust behind Red Rock, thereby eliminating much of the technicality, and this has been done a number of times—but the RRT is a more direct traverse, up and over each peak. The HURT is somewhere between the RRT and scrambling the Thrust, as Honnold climbed about two-thirds of the peaks via technical routes and ran along the backside to tag a few more.

The ground we covered consisted mostly of well-established scrambling, climbing, and canyoneering routes, but there were a couple of question marks going in. The biggest was the north face of Monument Peak. There is little published climbing history on the walls in Mustang Canyon; the only established route to the top of Monument’s north face seemed to be Slim, a 19-pitch 5.10c.

During the RRT, we fell behind our planned pace, and we determined that another Grade V route would likely set us up for failure. At the base of Monument’s north wall, we weighed our options and decided to take an obvious, low-angle ridge splitting the face. The Northeast Ridge (2,000, III 5.9) climbed like an alpine route, with isolated roped blocks interspersed with long sections of scrambling; we climbed around eight pitches up to 5.9 and soloed a fair amount of low-fifth-class terrain. We did not encounter any signs of prior travel but cannot be certain this was a first ascent.

We did the RRT in a “supported” alpine style, bivying in the canyons without returning to civilization, but relying on water and food caches that we or friends had stashed. We logged 90 hours of moving time during the six-day traverse, climbed over 120 guidebook pitches, and gained around 30,000’ of elevation.

—Sam Boyce

The Red Rock Traverse: Peaks Summited and Routes Climbed

White Rock Pinnacle — Sandy Hole to Tunnel Vision (6 pitches, 5.6)

Buffalo Peak — East Ridge (3rd class)

Bridge Mountain — Northeast Arete (5 pitches, 5.6)

Mescalito — Dark Shadows (12 pitches, 5.8)

Magic Mountain — Community Pillar (8 pitches, 5.9)

Juniper Peak — East Ridge Office Wall to Birthday Cake (8 pitches, 5.7)

Rainbow Wall — Birdhunter Buttress (14 pitches, 5.9)

Cactus Flower Tower — North Face (8 pitches, 5.9)

Mt Wilson — Cactus Joe’s Connection (3 pitches, 5.7)

Indecision Peak — Lady Luck to Celtic Cracks (15 pitches, 5.10d)

Sandstone Mountain — Sandstone Slalom  (7 pitches, 5.7 R)

Monument Peak — Northeast Ridge (8 pitches, 5.9)

Black Velvet Peak — Epinephrine (16 pitches, 5.9)

Windy Peak — A Midsummer Night’s Scheme (8 pitches, 5.7)