Red Rock Rendezvous is coming really fast. The event takes place on March 30, 31, and April 1 in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. We have a lot going on before and after the event. to learn about what’s up, click here.
As we’re all getting excited for the event, we thought that we should put up this post about last year’s after-party. It sounds like some of the games we played will be used in the main event…
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Yesterday, we did a Red Rock Rendezvous news round-up. But we left
something out…something that was a high point for our guides at the
event. And indeed, something that will now become a part of future Red
Rock Rendezvous Spring Mountain Ranch games.
On Sunday night after all of the Rendezvous participants leave the
festival grounds, Mountain Gear
hosts a dinner for the athletes and guides. This is usually a pretty
laid back affair where Paul Fish, the president of Mountain Gear, thanks
those who helped put on the event. But this year something happened
that was a little bit different. The usually laid back event turned
into a series of competitive non-climbing climber games.
The centerpiece of the evening was a game called “Cups.” In the game, a
person must not allow his or her feet to pass a line, but they can crawl
out from the line using wine bottles for hands. Once they stretch out
as far as they can, they place one of the two bottles upright, then
using the single bottle work their way back to the line.
The goal is to place a wine bottle as far out from the line as possible.
AAI Guide Mike Pond helps AAI
Guide Mary Harlan place a bottle by holding one foot.
This gave
Mary a bit more reach than she would have had.
When we started, this game was somewhat subdued. It was simply a matter
of, how tall are you and how far can you stretch? But as the game went
on, teams got more an more creative.
In this first video, AAI senior guide trainer, Mike Powers, makes a very
standard bottle placement.
In this second video, we start to see how the guides became a little
more competitive and started to be a lot more creative. Here we see AAI
guide Ben Traxler with the bottles, AAI Guide Cliff Palmer is holding
his legs and AAI guide Richard Riquleme climbs across Ben’s back to
place a bottle as far out as possible.
This last video shows the extent and creativity that our guides combined
with Mountain Gear employees went to in order to place a bottle as far
as was humanly possible. In this video, Richard Riquleme, Cliff Palmer,
Scott Massey, and Dana Hickenbottom, along with a Mountain Gear
Employee hold another Mountain Gear Employee using sling material, while
AAI guide Mary Harlan squirms across the guy in order to place a bottle
waaaay out there.
This game was really fun, though it could certainly be dangerous. After
we finished we imagined what might happen if one of those bottles
broke, and we didn’t come up with many positive outcomes.
Next year this will become an actual competition at Red Rock Rendezvous,
though they will use bowling pins instead of bottles to create a little
bit wider margin of safety. A room with thirty people in it came up
with some spectacular and creative ideas. I can’t wait to see what a
thousand people with dozens of different teams will come up with for
this game…
–Jason D. Martin