In 1992 Jorge Visser bolted the first 3 routes on a “secret” crag on the far outskirts of St. George. Never mind that there was a road that you could drive any vehicle to within car radio hearing distance from the crag, and the ground around the cliff was littered with nails from frequent redneck pallet parties. So not very secret to anyone except Jorge.
While projecting Jorge’s routes, (which were all 5.12) it was obvious that the wall needed some more moderate terrain to warm up on.
Armed with a modified sledge hammer, and hand drill, Wayne Harding and I installed a top anchor on what we thought was an attractive section of the wall and began the process of attempting to climb up what was basically a sheet of loose rock. Over the course of 2 days we removed enough holds to build up an impressive little pile of red sand at the base of the cliff that was high enough to eventually allow us to reach a higher set of opening holds. We began calling the route “Red Rain”, and eventually decided that the tactics of pulling off the only holds was not an ideal route development technique.
Over the course of 2 days of attempts we would hike up and down a gully on the far right side of the wall to install and remove the top rope. Each time we climbed the gully there were 2 Chuckwalla lizards in a horizontal crack that retreated into the fissure as we approached. After several encounters I suggested the name "Chuckawalla wall", for the crag. It seemed to catch on as the wall became more popular. Climbers referred to their afternoon sessions as, “laps at chuck.”
Eventually as the spaces on the wall began to be filled in, and concurrent with the nascent growth of other climbing areas in the region, in 1994 Tim Duck and I produced a guidebook that included the 10 routes at Chuckawalla Wall.
In those days word processors ran off a program called DOS. Spell check was probably 10 years in the future, and so whatever spelling you came up with was fine with the computer. As a primarily uneducated rock climber spelling was never my strong suit, and I put an additional “a” in the middle of the word, and by the time anyone pointed out my mistake years later it was too late. So even though the wall is named after Chuckwalla’s, it is called Chuckawalla Wall, and the difference is only due to my lack of education.
