Yellow Brick Road, Black Velvet Canyon 5.10b

    
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Red Rocks, Nevada USA

  • Currently 5.0/5
Avg time to climb route: 3-5 hours
Approach time: 45 minutes
Descent time: 1.5-2 hours
Number of pitches: 10
Height of route: 1200'
Overview
Yellow Brick Road is a two-pitch direct variation to Dream of Wild Turkeys. It is slightly harder, more sustained, and it avoids the hardest slabby cruxes and a long easy crack, and thus is an excellent variation for those climbing at the grade.
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History
By the time the Uriostes, with Mike Ward and Bill Bradley, began this route in the spring of 1985, they were experienced in leading long, bolt-protected first ascents. One challenge was simply having the hardware to adequately protect the routes. Doubts were already beginning to surface about the security of the 1/4” bolts that climbers had been relying on for anchors. Mike had a bad experience at about this time on Zodiac in Yosemite. The first move of that route was a hook leading to a 1/4” aid bolt. As soon as he weighted the bolt, it snapped, dropping him twenty feet to the ground. They continued and finished the route, but the experience was educational.

In order to retain some level of safety on their Red Rocks routes, they attempted to place a sufficient number of bolts to preserve a reasonable redundancy of anchors. This required many bolts and hangers. To satisfy their hardware needs, a small production line was set up in George’s garage. The hangers were cut from pieces of angle iron ori...   [full history for SuperTopo members only!]

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Approach
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Descent
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Source: SuperTopo Guidebook Staff Last update: September 4, 2006
Black Velvet Canyon - Yellow Brick Road 5.10b - Red Rocks, Nevada USA. Click to Enlarge
Yellow Brick Road is a two-pitch variation to Dream of Wild Turkeys.
Photo: Greg Barnes
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