Dark Shadows 

5 bolts were replaced in October 2001 by the ASCA: "first pitch protection bolts, one bolt at pitch 3 belay, one bolt at original pitch 4 belay, and the protection bolt on pitch 5. Most anchors higher on route are one old and one newer bolt, and all can be backed up with natural gear. One protection bolt off of a ledge on pitch 6 is an old rusty 1/4"."

The above description ignores that there are at least 6 more pitches of rock up above that are part of this great route. My memory of being on some of of those last January is not good enough to really do justive to the route, but I wanted to make a comment or two.One of my reasons for not going tha whole distance was the lack of equipment- that being which was required to replace the anchors on the upper pitches- in some cases just webbing and rings, but in all cases the stations were pretty sketchy one way or another. It should be done the rest of the way up.I ran out of webbign and rings before I finished the job. If you head all the way up, BYO.

When I climbed this route, we went all the way to the top of Mescalito. The upper pitches are quite different from the lower ones, the rock is not as good, route finding ability is needed and there were no more fixed anchors (when I did it). Thus a larger rack and sense of adventure are required. The summit is a scenic spot that is worth a visit.

If you go to the top, I would not recommend rappelling the route. From the summit, simply scramble NW along the ridge, then eventually drop down the east side into a bowl, avoiding anything harder than 3rd class. From here you can descend into the north branch of Pine Creek (same creek where the route starts). I have done this twice, taking slightly different routes, doing one rappel or two. Look for downclimbing routes as much as possible, you should not have to do more than two raps (the last one right into the creek bed). This is actually a pretty short descent for Red Rocks (taking maybe 1-2 hours back to the base of the route). Unfortunately there is no descent beta from the top of Mescalito in the new Swain guide, I think there was in the old edition.

Don't miss this route! A classic.

Not sure about the "s" on the first pitch rating - seemed quite reasonable to me. There's no reason at all not to combine pitches one and two - I've done it on 50m rope with no problem. Great ledge at the top of P2.

The 3rd pitch is most definitely not 75 feet. You CAN'T rap on a single 45 or 50 meter rope from there and I've got the booty to prove it. Haven't tried a 60m from there though. The best descent is with two ropes - you can rap 3 + 4 together (plus avoid the worst of the rope eating crack) and then 1+2. I always descend the last rap in tandem, each of us carrying a rope end to keep it out of the water. When you pull the rope get your partner to stand in the pool and keep your rope semi-dry!

Both lines are good on pitch 4 - the crack on the right and the dihedral on the left. The one advantage of the dihedral is that nobody will drop a rope on your head as you pull the crux.

Pitch 5 (the overhang) was pretty good but we backed down from there in the face of easy climbing and questionable rock. The character of the route changes a lot when you leave the varnish.

A great route for photography.

John

Great route! Cool creek and crystal clear pools at and near base. While we were climbing this route we got to watch mountain goats defy gravity on the cliffs across the way. Is anybody else ever amazed that an international epicenter of hedonistic pleasure, vice, dirt and grime is so close when back in these beautiful canyons? I always am.

Climbed this route October 4, 2004. You can rappel with one 60 meter rope ONLY IF you get to the top of P4. Otherwise, bring two ropes. At the top of P4 are two sets of anchors. You need to rappel from the lower anchor to the right. The supertopo guidebook has the next rappel anchor drawn in the wrong location. It's lower down. You might want to beef up the slings too. Then rap to the top of P2 and then P1. This is also the better descent route if you have two ropes. Fantastic climb.

My partner and I only had the original 1970's small little red guidebook that describes this route in detail for 6 pitches and then says something like "climb a bit more to the top and then walk-off down the ravine." I will say the first 4 pitches are spectacular - some of the best climbing I've done at Red Rocks. The next two pitches were so-so and the last "bit" of climbing to the top was actually two more full rope lengths of sketchy moderate face climbing with essentially no pro. We got to the top near the end of the day and after searching around quite a bit we saw no easy walk-off. We decided it would be safe to come back down the way we knew, but the raps consisted of having to use sketchy webbing through a hole in sandstone at the top, a single old rusty bolt for the next rap (no place to put in pro), and then us having to leave a two nut anchor for the third rap until we were back to the nice bolts at the tope of P4. Do yourselves a favor and rap back down after the fourth pitch... the rest of the climb (and adventure) isn't worth it.

Well, I havent been to the top via Dark Shadows, but I have summited via Deep Space, a route a ways to the left.

Walking off Mescalito is possible, but routefinding is important, so getting to the summit with an hour or two of daylight left is ideal. Basically head back and drop off to the right (north side) and then stay high, following the occasional cairn for quite a ways. A couple of short 4th class traverses later, and eventually you hit the canyon floor near a fallen tree and a large boulder. From here, its just a good, long, easy hike back to the packs and the car.

Alternatively, it is also (in theory) possible to rappel the last chimney on Cat in the Hat, then downclimb to the summit of the regular route and then rap that route with two ropes.

Perfect route for warm/hot days. Totally shaded with a nice, cool pool of water at the base.

this thing is not all in the sun thats crazy, went last monday got an early start and only pitch 4 was in the shade, if you plan to try to escape the sun and climb this in the summer dont start early the sun cooks it. the shade doesent start untill around 11 but i finally did the route the first 4 pitches. and i am impressed, i liked dark shadows, so go back and do it, is what i say..and the base is a great spot to chill out

What s stellar route! I led the first 3 ptches, actually linking pitch 1 and 2 together. The third pitch was my favorite. All in all, some of the best climbing I've done so far. Watch out for the water down below when tossing your rope. 2 60 meter ropes are whats needed for 2 raps to the base.

Topped this out yesterday and I think the upper pitches are awsome. Climbed the first 4 of Dark Shadows to the roof, then went through the roof to do pitches 5&6 of Heart of Darkness. Joined up with dark shadows agian to top out. Getting down sucks, but the climbing and the views are great.

Upper pitches area ton of fun. Rock quality is better than I expected. Handren guide gives good directions. I would recommend staying roped up for the final 250' of "4th class".

climbing to the top of mescalito via dark shadows makes for a really great outing. if you plan on heading up past P4, traverse right under the giant roof and belay at the bolts right on the arete, the highest & furthest right of three sets of bolts under the roof, or plan on moving the belay after finishing P4. this info is adapted from the handren guide, which we found inaccurate on some of the pitch lengths.

P5. 120', 5.7 - Follow a seam past a bolt to a roof. Continue up a widening left-trending crack, up a short chimney to an anchor on top of a huge pillar. A fun pitch.
P6. 100', 5.7 - Step across the void and climb the right side of a chimney with huecos on left wall. Go up 30' to a bolt, and continue, eventually traversing left and then continuing up to an anchor on a ledge at the base of a crack.
P7. 115', 5.7 - Climb the crack to a small ledge below a roof.
P8. 115', 5.7 - Go up the right side of the roof, through a crack to a bushy ledge. Continue to a higher ledge beneath broken cracks. Linking P7 & P8 stretched my 70m, but made for a great pitch.
P9. ~80', 5.7 - Climb the cracks to a varnished ledge with a bolt.
P10. ~150', 5.8 - Go up the right facing corner directly above the belay. Where the corner leans off to the left, climb up the face to beneath the big hueco'ed roof. Pull through the roof on good holds, and continue up the crack to beneath the top of Mescalito. I thought this was the best pitch of the route.

At this point, the Handren guide advises that ~200' of 3rd class gets you to the top of Mescalito. Unable to locate anything like 3rd class, my partner and I soloed up some 5th class terrain about 200 feet to a more exposed face to the left of the big, dark red headwall. At this point we roped back up, climbing ~70' of 5.5/6 to ~30 feet of scrambling, reaching the top.

Descent: My partner and I headed southwest along the side of Mescalito along some ridges and easily downclimbable terrain until some cairns guided us skier's right to a gully. Started off walking down the gully to find a slung tree. Rapped off this to a slung chockstone, which we rapped off to a third station. This station is best avoided, as the difficulties consist of ~15 feet of easy down-chimneying. A little more walking took us to a fourth station, a bush with long slings (our third rappel). More walking down the gully led to a steep section, with a rappel sling on the left - avoid this last rappel by walking down the ramp skier's right of the shrubbery. This puts you into ~150 feet of bushwhacking to the wash on the south side of Mescalito.

Rapping with a single 60m is possible, but requires caution. As Joe Lee says, you must get atop P4 and you must use the LOWER rap anchor at the top of P4. If you go from the upper anchor you are SOL.

If you rap the first two pitches with two ropes, it is almost impossible to avoid a soaked rope. Even with one rope, it'll probably get a bit wet. Good reason to go all the way to the top!

I don't know which book Erik got his beta from (having read the route description on here I wish it'd been from MP) but losing the route on the 6th pitch, which took us 2 unplanned-for hours, sucked! We picked the route back up but the description Erik had printed out and carried in his pocket about the route was so bad that it was hard for us to recognize if we were on the right line or not. I think route-finding is pretty important when doing the entire DS climb. I'm not sure about where the anchors are located at the top of P6 - we found the roof, but couldn't see any bolted anchor.

All things told, however, Dark Shadows had some of the best long-route climbing I've ever done! The upper pitches are just as good as the lower pitches and the two roofs you have to pull are super friendly offering good feet and big jugs. Only thing that we hadn't planned for was the descent into Pine Creek Canyon South Fork. Lots of down-scrambling and 4 rappels bring you to the bottom. It took us nearly 3 hours.

MY RECOMMENDATION (If you're doing the whole shebang and going off Mescalito Peak on the south side): Start at 0600 when the park opens, walk to the beginning of the route with just the gear you're going to climb in, take extra water, take extra water, take extra water, (3 times, not a typo) do the climb and don't leave anything at the bottom of the climb, take extra water, bring a headlamp and enjoy the views from the big ledge with the tree - it's absolutely fabulous. Don't forget: TAKE EXTRA WATER!

Made copies of the route description directly from the Handren Guide which seemed to give great info until we got to the upper pitches. Like Aeon said, we had a hell of a time with pitch 6. We never saw a piton anchor, neither of us knew what the hell a "pod" was, and the only dirty gully we saw didn't appear to be part of this route at all. We never saw where to traverse left and up to any anchors, so we just built our own and kept going UP (that is the direction that we are all supposed to be going anyway, right!) The other sections of the description seemed to be fine, just pitch 6 sucked for us. Route finding is defiantly a good skill to possess and admittedly not my strong suit.

All in all, the climbing was great and beautiful. The notice earlier that the shade sets in around 11 is great if you are only climbing to pitch 4 and then rappelling off. If you plan to summit, Aeon gives solid advice to start EARLY, especially if it's your first time climbing this route. Oh and he is really not kidding about bringing extra water. I had 3 liters of water and burned through all of it by the time we hit the summit, making the decent (in the dark) and hike back to the packs and then the car quite unpleasant.

Rather than rapping down one of those nasty gullies, you should consider doing the walk off:

http://www.mountainproject.com/v/nevada/red_rock/pine_creek_>>>>>

Climbed to the top, thought it was an awesome route. The routefinding seemed pretty straighfoward. I passed the belay spot on the 6th pitch and built a hanging belay about 60ft above. This allowed Mark to link the next two pitches and we ended up topping out in 8 pitches to the big tree ledge. Definately some technical climbing left to get to the top of Mescalito. We did three more short quick pitches still roped up to get to where we could scramble to the summit of Mescalito. Took about 3 hours to hike back to car(but it was raining so we moved slow)

Awesome day though!

Okay, Gigi and I summited via this route and it was awesome. Highly recommended. I posted the beta pictures for the full route, we climbed it in 11 pitches. I preserved the pitch numbering as listed in the Handren guide, but like everyone else we linked P1 and 2. So, nine pitches to the north shoulder and then two more up broken rock to the summit. And by the way, there is no mention of the final pitches being 3rd class in the Handren book - the final headwall is definitely fifth class - easy but exposed.

We climbed it Sept 29 and we were in the shade all day. We descended in the dark, down the Cat in the Hat rappels with a single rope. Do not attempt this unless you have done the Cat summit route from the ground up (I had done it twice to get it wired). The routefinding would be extremely difficult on this exposed descent if you've never done it before and using a single rope is tricky. That said, I think the Cat descent is the fastest way off the summit. Larry DeAngelo has good beta on the Cat summit route in his book "Red Rock Odyssey".

I hope that by posting the beta, more people will consider climbing the full route. But we should all do our best to retain the full-on adventure aspect of this long route. For example, I saw a lot of unecessarily chalked-up holds. Try to exhibit "leave no trace" and don't trash this route. And please don't place any more bolts.