The Red Rocks Access: Route A
Approach: Walk up the track past the gate, up to a clearing. Cross a bridge over a stream and pick up a trail leaving the clearing on the left. After about lm, take a branch left. The trail peters out after a few hundred meters in an old wood lot. Continue westwards (easy bushwhacking, if you take care to avoid gaining any height). You should be able to see the cliffs rising up through the trees in another few hundred meters. Cut straight up to the extensive scree field, from which any of the various buttresses can be easily reached. A direct approach from Mountain Road is not recommended because of an intervening cedar swamp.
Character: These cliffs get their name from the very obvious red rockface. This marks the site of a major recent rockfall.
Red 5.9
A strange route. Ascend the scree field to the base of the upper headwall. Belay in a left to right slanting gully, where the vegetation gives way to rock.
1. 5.2 Climb up and right until the rock steepens, then go straight up to a grassy slope and traverse back left to a cedar tree belay. Loose and scary.
2. 5.7 Use the tree to get onto the rock. Move up a couple of meters, then traverse left along an obvious easy line, underneath a long sloping overhang. Cross a depression in the rock, and step down to a big ledge.
3. 5.9 The long sloping overhang ends at a left-facing dihedral. Climb up this short overhanging corner above the belay (3 pins for protection), then over a birds nest and up to a wide ledge on the left.
Make one hard move up the overhanging wall above to easy ground.