The Cowlick Crag is a nice blob of rock that can be found directly across the trail from Dickies Cliff.
The crag features morning sun and a lot of easily accessible top-ropes. Some of the rock quality is questionable, but the routes on the more friable terrain tend to be top-ropes.
Getting There
Park in the Red Springs Parking Lot. Take the trail up out of the lot below Cannibal Crag, below Physical Graffiti, towards the notch. You will find the Cowlick Crag on the right hand side, just before you start to go up hill.
Top-roped the #1 and #2 unnamed TR climbs on Cowlick Crag last week (Dec. 2007). We hadn't climbed in 14 yrs., so were looking for something easy, fun, and safe. We found these routes to be very enjoyable, as they were the least vertical of the climbs we did at Red Rocks, and the top-rope set-up was pretty straight forward.
There was a single bolt on top of the rock that allowed some protection for access to the 2-bolt anchors on the cliff face. The climbs on this side of Cowlick Crag are short, and the rock is a bit friable, but the easy top-rope set-up and low angled rock provided a high fun factor. Wish there were more climbs like this in Red Rocks.
Two families consisting of beginner climbers from age 4 to 40 climbed the two "Shrimpy" TR routes on Cowlick Crag this past weekend. A huge thanks to all who post here and made researching the climbs from our home in Minneapolis possible, and for providing pictures that made scouting the climb before taking the children out there a breeze!
I'll add a few impressions - these are from real beginners FWIW. The two bolts on top of the rock for the Shrimpy routes are what we thought were good in one case and just OK for the second. The second spun in place a bit, and the bolt was loose enough to "hand-tighten" (which was not comforting). The looseness of the second bolt combined with the nature of the rock gave us some serious pause. ButwWe used some webbing to rig a third anchor point spanning a couple of solid rock outcroppings, and combined with the two bolted anchors, felt good about the set-up after equalizing the load. Post-climb inspection did not reveal any issues with any of the anchors.
Again, our evaluation of that loose bolt is a beginner's perspective, so others with more experience may disagree with the thoughts. In any event, it was a great morning of climbing, and all made possible by the good folks who took the time to post here. So, thanks again!
Also, a quick word on "getting there" section above. To get to Cowlick Crag, take the trail bearing to the right (rather than left) out of the parking lot. The various names of the features described in the "getting there" section are likely familiar to folks in the area, but for out-of-towners, thought I'd add to bear right out of the lot.
The notch referred to in the getting there section is a helpful guidepost -- just note it is not visible until after you round the first big rock outcropping a short way down the trail.
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Cowlick Crag
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