I’ve never been much of a boulderer.  In fact, I hate bouldering.  So naturally I found it odd to suddenly hear myself saying, “Great!  I’ll pick you up at the airport in Vegas and we’ll spend March bouldering!”  Why would I agree to boulder with Moe and Andreas, two Italians I hardly knew for a whole month?  One word: Vegas!

Hookers, drinking and gambling are all great, but what has always made Las Vegas, Nevada special for me is the climbing.  Red Rocks National Monument lies just outside the city and encompasses some of the most beautiful desert terrain anywhere on earth.  Few places, if any, boast such ideal climbing conditions.  A climber needs no more than a t-shirt, shorts, a little climbing gear and SPF-50 to climb at Red Rocks from November to April.  Opening up like a gaping mouth ready to consume the city, Red Rocks forms a giant bowl shaped valley with massive 1,000-meter walls on the south side, world class single pitch sport climbs on the north side, and a lifetime of adventure climbing up the many hidden valleys and canyons.

If you’ve heard of Red Rocks, you may already know this.  What the average yahoo doesn’t know, is that it’s also an amazing bouldering area.  Moreover, Vegas is one of the cheapest destinations in America for flights and rental cars.  Because Vegas makes its money at the black jack tables, the powers that be make every effort to get people into the city, where they can then proceed to take their money through gambling.  Climbers may be the only ones to regularly visit Vegas who don’t have the cards stacked against them from the beginning.

I had met Moe for the first time in Val Di Mello, Italy nearly two years before, and we had kept in touch.  He was from a small area in Italy called North Tyrol, which is known as the only place in Italy where the primary language is not Italian.  They speak a dialect similar to German, but also High German, Italian and often English.  He immediately became known to me as the fake Italian.  We bouldered and hiked in the valley for a few days before parting company.  2 years later, Moe was inviting himself to America and I was offering to pick him up at the airport for a month of bouldering in Red Rocks, Nevada and Bishop, California. 

The day after Moe and his friend Andreas(Ando) arrived, we were zipping through the desert around Las Vegas looking for bouldering.  My small Subaru was packed with 5 crash pads, 3 chalk bags, 2 psyched Italians and one nervous American.  Having just started a month long trip of nothing but bouldering (the car didn’t contain a single rope or harness) I felt a bit like a traitor to my trad comrades who where no doubt out there somewhere climbing lonely, solitary peaks, pooping in tubes, freezing to death, carrying untold pounds of gear and generally miserable but nobly enduring.  I was going to become a boulderer, what was next, ballroom dancing?

Moe was the same as I remembered him from all those years ago in Italy; easy going but focused… something like a hawk on Prozac.  Ando, Moe’s close friend whom I had not met before, immediately endeared himself to me.  He had dreads like the Predator, a smile like Ronald McDonald and he was always psyched.  The three of us arrived at Calico Basin and stomped off through the cactus and lizards toward the mountain of red boulders shimmering in the distance. Calico Basin is a long line of lovely boulders that tumbled down the hill over the eons and settled in little groupings on the flat land bellow.  The blood red rocks were contrasted by an almost pure white stone backdrop, and a blue sky streaked with clouds completed the scene.  We ran into the boulders like kids in a candy store.  Normally it takes more to get me excited than a couple of rocks but that day Moe and Ando’s glee was contagious.  We’d throw down our gear proclaiming a particular rock the new base camp.  Five minutes later we would have to slog back through the heat to get our gear because a better rock had presented itself further down. 

Once the initial excitement wore off, I found myself falling into Moe and Ando’s natural rhythm.  It was a pattern of friendship formed silently over years, and one based around bouldering.  I had never witnessed anyone take bouldering so seriously.  To me it had always been “pebble wrestling,” a silly half-sport meant as training for “real” climbing.  To Moe and Ando, bouldering was the sport, it was not a means to an end or training for anything except more bouldering.  They didn’t even own ropes! 

Moe’s approach was simple and undeniably appealing and effective.  He generally took all day with a single problem that he selected for the beauty of the line and not for the grade.    In some cases he would spend all day on a V3; another day he would flash a V6.  His daily fuel was a bazaar combination of water, bananas, cream cheese and hand rolled cigarettes.  He almost always wore kaki pants and a yellow shirt.  I fell in love with bouldering by watching Moe climb.  His every move inspired me.  Suddenly we were climbing long days, thinking through problems together and sending lines right and left.  Failures no longer seem something to fret over, but something to learn from and leave for another day.  Successes were no longer a tick mark in the guidebook, but quiet smiles and sometimes a handshake or a pat on the back.  I had spent the last 10 years building a life and personality around climbing, and here it was, coming undone, then being beautifully rewoven into something new and entirely unexpected.