MysterZ is simply a 5.7 route in Red Rock, shouldn’t be too difficult, right? Well, it was quite an adventure!

Pitch 1 – Broke that up into 2 pitches? Definitely was tricky finding gear, a bit runout

Pitch 2 – Maybe did that one in one pitch?

Pitch 3 (scramble pitch) – I continued climbing part of P4

Pitch 4 – Partway up, we ran out of rope, so instead of simuling (with Alexis on the class 3 scramble), I built a hanging belay and belayed her in to the base of P4, and then she belayed me again as I continued climbing. Rather than going into the corner wide crack (which seemed unprotectable), I stayed on the face which had a few features to protect with (including slinging some knobs), however it was sparse and sketchy, especially with the wind starting to blow strong). I ended P4 correctly at a step across to the left on top of the pedistal above the left crack.

Pitch 5 – Stemmed over the tree and up, easy, all good fun climbing, then there was a 6 foot black hand crack that finished up into a cave with the chimney on the left and the exposed traverse on the right. I stopped here and belayed, it was supposed to keep going.

Then I did the traverse to the right and found a big bowl with a small hand crack on an overhanging move. I walked around that instead since it seemed tough, and unsure of where to go next, belayed Alexis up again.

Then I continued up easy slabby terrain and was unsure of where to go again. Seemed like could just continue up and right, but maybe it would get cliffed out and needed to go left. I belayed Alexis up again out of uncertainty.

Then we realized we were at the top of P5 (finally, it took us 3 pitches! That would have been a long pitch!).

Pitch 6 – I stepped left from our belay and went up the easier 5.4 crack and ended at the class 3 terrain.

So in total, we did P1 in 2 pitches, and P5 in 3 pitches, so it was 9 pitches of climbing total (plus the simul-scrambling walk at the end).