Aphrodite

My buddy Lance and I got together in October 2006 to climb in Red Rock Canyon. I had not been to the canyon before. There are somewhere over a hundred new sport climbs there. Neither of us had climbed for some time so we had decided to do some 5.6-5.8 routes just to have fun and get ourselves back into it. On lead I would rate myself about a 5.8 climber.

I don't remember what route we thought we were on but we thought it was a 5.8. Here's the beta from Lance's route book with his comments:

3). The Whale: "Aphrodite" (5.10a) Mostly continuous pitch, thin moves below and past an obvious pothole. Many crimp moves and several cruxes. 90 foot route, 10 bolts. Dave leads, beautifully, nicely protected route, very tough lead out of the "cave" = pothole. Didn’t' know at the time, but this beauty was a 5.10 !! Look at exact location of trees where Megan and Noelle were! This was definitely the one! Whoa…., didn't know we could do it, huh?

Here I am approaching the pothole. Things got pretty thin exiting the pothole. Thankfully I had taken twice as many draws as the book said I'd need since we had read the wrong climb completely, I had just enough.

And here's Lance looking for his exit from the "cave". We completed the climb and both felt pretty weak afterward until we found out it was a 5.10a and not the 5.8 we had thought at the time.