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The Venture Report | Ben Thomson | May 20th, 2024
Hitting The Road For Belong - The First Time In 7 Years
I recently went on a two-week road trip with a friend, during which I visited 30 independent retail stores that might be a good fit for Belong Designs. My goal was to introduce myself and leave behind some of our products to make a good first impression on the store owners and managers. Along the way, we had an incredible time. We climbed in Moab for a weekend, St. George for an evening, and Las Vegas/Red Rocks for a couple of days.
I also drove to a few places I hadn’t had the opportunity to experience before, like Zion National Park. My favorite highlights of the trip were seeing my friend in Encinitas, surfing for a couple of days, and climbing in Red Rocks with Dyami.
The following photos were taken during our multi-pitch climb up the Rose Tower in Red Rocks. Multi-pitch climbing involves climbing multiple consecutive pitches. This particular climb is a moderate one, with 600 feet of climbing broken into five pitches.
Most climbs like this start with the hike in. Finding the base of climbs in areas like this can be challenging because many rock faces and areas are hidden.
I initially thought we were climbing the rock in front of Dyami (in the picture below) for the first 45 minutes of our hike:
We then learned that we were heading into a completely different valley for our climb:
After we found the base of the tower, we put on our gear and packed a small backpack of goodies for the excursion.
The first pitch took us to a small divot in the rock where I was able to set up an anchor and belay spot.
The next pitches took us to more ledges or tops of rock columns where we could set up comfortable and safe belays.
The climbing portion of this adventure took us 2.5 to 3 hours, and we were rewarded with epic views of the mountains and the Las Vegas skyline at sunset.
For this climb, there is a walk-off where you descend the back of the rock features and then hike down a steep valley of rocks and trail. It can be hard to find the trail off climbs like this, and the hike back to our packs took another hour.
After recovering our packs, we spent another 1-2 hours hiking back to our car and were rewarded with another beautiful view of the mountains in the dark.
Adventures like this fill my cup for many reasons. The most important thing to remember is that the journey is almost always more important than the destination. We spent 30 minutes at the summit, but the true joy of this adventure was each piece of the journey along the way.