Iris and Tom had spent two days rockclimbing in Red Rocks while I was off wandering about various summits on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Today we got together for a Red Rocks scramble called Rainbow Direct (previously titled as "The Best Route Ever" here). Iris had overslept when we did this as a large group two years ago, and she has been wanting to do it ever since. Our small party of three was much easier than our previous party of nine, and consequently we were quite a bit faster. This isn't necessarily a good thing, mind you, as we were more tired as well. The weather had us occasionally chilled or warm, but overall an excellent day, weather-wise.
I was staying in town with my wife who was in Las Vegas to help ref a girl's
volleyball tournament. I met Iris and Tom at the Red Rocks Loop exit where
we left their car and took my jeep around the loop to the Oak Creek Trailhead.
It wasn't an early start as we 
headed off
around 8:20a, but it seemed we would
have more than enough daylight to complete the planned route. Not so, as it
turned out. I had loaded my GPSr with tracks from previous visits as well as
a few from Harlan Stockman, a local with many days spent in Red Rocks. Despite
all this beta, we managed to get 
off-route almost out of the gate when
we started up from the trail sooner than needed. Luckily I noticed this before
the scrambling starts, and we simply 
traversed west across a few small
gullies to 
get us to the 
right start. Once there,
the route becomes somewhat obvious with a good many ducks to keep us on
track. Tom spotted a 
bighorn ram above us, 
sitting calmly on
its perch while watching us progress. 
Another was spotted and
eventually 
a third, and none of them seem much interested in giving up
their prime real estate. They allowed us to climb around and
above them, getting 
photographs all the while, after
which we left them to their sun worshipping.
Upward we 
traveled, mostly on the same route, sometimes
finding 
alternates that looked interesting. I would periodically
reference the GPSr to verify the ducks or pick the right way when the ducks
proved insufficient or ambiguous. There seemed to be more 
handlines
than I remembed previously, a mix of old 
static ropes and steel cables.
The latter were somewhat thin and hard to imagine holding a grip when used as a
handline. Fortunately, these weren't really needed. 
Iris and Tom
managed to do the entire route up to Rainbow without using a single line. I used
two of them to pull up on and another to haul my pack up after me in
a narrow chimney (the others 
stemmed outside this
chimney). It was a very fun route even after doing it three times, and we
all enjoyed it quite a bit.
It was noon by the time we reached 
Rainbow Mtn, and it seemed the
hardest part
was behind us. Surely we'd get back easily by 4p, right? Or so I was thinking.
Rainbow Wall, the highest point of the day, was less than half a mile
away, with a minor point, 
Rainbow Peak, in-between. Somehow it would
take us quite some time to reach these next two points. Some of this was because
our summit stays were longer than usual (for me, anyway), but also the
scrambling was 
more involved than I'd remembered. Rainbow Mtn's
register dated back only to Nov 2018, no longer maintaining the record of my
previous visit from Feb 2018. It was another hour before we got to
Rainbow Peak (no register), and another 40min to get to Rainbow Wall.
Between these last two points was another rocky formation that can be easily
bypassed along its base around the east and north sides. I suggested we could
climb it by 
a sporty route on the east side, which we did - a stiff
class 3-4 crack - only to find later that this wasn't the same route I'd climbed
it on that previous visit. Rainbow Wall's register went back much further, still
holding 
the 2018 ascent which we came to realize was exactly two years
ago to the date.
It was 1:50p before we 
started down from Rainbow Wall, now heading off
on the only segment of today's route I was unfamiliar with - Rainbow Wall to
Gunsight Notch. The horizontal distance is less than a quarter mile, but the
vertical drop is something like 700ft with large cliffs off
the north side of Rainbow Wall. The class 3 route between them is
intricate and not easily figured out. Here's where Harlan's track came in handy,
allowing us to set off in the right direction heading west (and north of another
point almost as high as Rainbow Wall's summit). 
Ducks began to appear
as we continued further and the combination of the two were enough to keep us
on track, though not without some noodling and scratching of our heads
in a few places. The route makes 
several turns as it negotiates
Rainbow Wall's northwest side through 
various cliff bands. Some
lingering snow on the north faces had not been a problem earlier, but now we had
several places to dance around the white stuff and one particularly
tricky ice crossing that gave us 
great pause. It would take us a full
hour and a half to make it from Rainbow Wall to 
Gunsight Notch and
then up to the 
small summit just above it with the same name.
It was now 3:20p and it was pretty clear that 4p was far too optimistic. Maybe
we'll get back before sunset?
Our last summit, Juniper Peak, was only 1/3mi to 
the northeast, but
again, it
would not be a trivial exercise to get between the two, though this time it
was a pretty straight shot along 
the connecting ridgeline. From a
previous visit
in 2016 with Tom Becht, I knew there as a 50-foot rappel along the ridge. For
this we had brought a 50m rope, much longer than needed, but the best option
we had with us. There were four existing 
slings
around a large outcrop at the
top of the rappel with a total of five rap rings between them. From three rings
hung 
a static line reaching down to the bottom. We judged the anchor
sufficient for our needs, so we didn't have to use any of our own webbing that
we'd brought. We were happy not to use the handline, preferring to use the
rope we'd brought with us for an easier double-strand rappel. I went down first,
then Iris and 
Tom in turn, and while we were
pretty efficient about it, it would still consume almost half an hour's time.
We 
reached Juniper by 4:20p with perhaps an hour or so before sunset.
Maybe we wouldn't get back by sunset - perhaps before needing headlamps?
Our stay atop Juniper was an abbreviated verion of the other summit stays as
by now I had expressed concern that I'd having trouble making the dinner date
with my wife back in Las Vegas. I texted her our whereabouts with a new
estimate as to when I expected to get back. The texts went back and forth
during the descent from Juniper, eventually settling on postponing our dinner
date for the following day and I'd just bring take-out back to the hotel. She's
not a climber, but at least she understands the predicaments we get ourselves
into sometimes. 
The descent from Juniper is actually pretty nice and
fairly 
straightforward. About 2/3 of the way down we caught up with a
pair of climbers that we'd seen at 
the top of Armatron as we were doing
our rappel earlier. As they were paused to remove their harnesses and climbing
gear, we 
continued down into 
the creek channel below Gunsight
Notch and followed 
ducks/trail/streambed
for almost a mile. We followed a thread of the trail back towards the Oak Creek
TH, eventually intersecting the Knoll Trail and following that. We didn't
realize at first that this was the N-S trail along the base of Red Rocks, not
the Arnight Trail that we wanted. With fading light, we made the decision to
leave the trail for a cross-country trek to the northeast, about 1/3mi to the
Arnight Trail. It was getting pretty dark before we reached it,
Tom and Iris stopping to get out their headlamps while I stubbornly pressed on,
determined not to use it. It was after 6p and quite dark before I
got back to
the jeep. There were three other vehicles in the lot still, so we weren't the
last one's out. Tom and Iris showed up a few minute's later, by which time I
had gotten my boots off, the jeep warmed up and a few beers opened for
celebration. What I had expected to be an easy-ish day turned out to be a full
program, all great fun though...