Horseshoe Wall Rock Climbing

This awesome and under-visited wall is home to several substantial Grade IV trad routes. Spanning the distance between the Fin on the left and Resolution Arete on the right, the Horseshoe Wall towers above the Sherwood Forest in one of the most beautiful expanses of stone at Red Rocks. For the most part the routes are serious and involved, but outstanding all the same.

Historical note by Larry DeAngelo: As the obvious "giant" of escarpment, the east side of Mount Wilson got a lot of attention from the earliest Red Rock pioneers. John Williamson was just a kid when he began exploring the wall with his friends in 1966 and 1967. They wore their tennis shoes, tied in directly with a goldline rope, and carried a small collection of steel carabiners and knifeblade pitons. On their initial attempts, they did not get very far. However, some of the names they coined were the first Red Rock feature names coined by climbers. "Willy's Couloir" was their name (John's friends called him by the nickname "Willy"). "Sherwood Forest" was what they called the huge wooded ledge system halfway up the face. As adventurous thirteen-year-olds, they were fans of Robin Hood.

Williamson's scouting (and persistence) ultimately paid off in 1970, when he and Keith Hogan completed a route to the summit. They navigated up Willy's Couloir, crossed to the right through Sherwood Forest, and climbed the northern headwall to the top. The following year Joe Herbst (who did not know John and Keith, and was unaware of their ascent) soloed directly to the northern edge of Sherwood Forest and continued up the top part of their route.

Joe's solo climb was done on the day before his wedding. The ascent was not as casual as it may sound. Although it took over thirty years until the route found its way into a guidebook (Sentimental Journey IV, 5.9), Joe said that he always considered that climb to be the pivotal moment in Red Rock, because it marked the beginning of "serious climbing."