BETA PHOTO: This is The Wasteland as it appears from about hal...
Description
A great climb. Make sure you are comfortable slinging chickenheads & plates and belaying off of slung chickenheads before attempting this route. P1: Climb the face up and left to a small arch (usually with webbing on it), sling the arch, then head up and right to a belay ledge. P2: Traverse right to the crack/groove and follow it up to a nice belay below short chimney. P3: Climb up and left through the chimney and exit left on top of the small tower, then step across chimney to the main wall. Climb great chickenheads and plates on the right side the corner and on the arete past a short headwall then belay on thin cracks & chickenheads just below the big roof. P4: Make a long traverse right on chickenheads until just past the big roof, then make a few 5.8 moves over a bulge and belay off of chickenheads and chocks, or traverse farther right and belay off of a 2 bolt anchor, which is a more comfy belay but gets you more rope-drag on pitches 4 & 5. NOTE: If you encounter inclement weather or other problems it is possible to escape the route by rapping from this belay with 2 60m ropes, but you will need to extend the anchor as much as possible and will still just BARELY reach the ground. P5: Make a long traverse back left just past the far left side of the upper headwall, then climb up chickenheads past a small bulge to a belay under an arete. Watch for rope-drag on this pitch. P6: Follow the arete up past a crack and up a low-angle slab with a couple bolts to summit.
Location
To descend, rappel off the NW side and scramble down west, then 5 single-rope rappels and some downclimbing down the west flank gets you back to the base.
Protection
Natural pro, with a couple of bolts. Bring a standard rack to a #2 or #3 Camalot and plenty of nuts/hexes, plus extra slings for slinging chickenheads & plates. Make sure to use long runners on the traversing pitches to minimize rope drag.
The route-finding on this route is highly inobvious, especially the first pitch. The descent too is unusually tricky. One's best bet for the first time up this route is to go with someone who has done it before.
I agree; route finding on the first pitch is difficult. For P1 I would suggest that climbers look up and right for a clump of grasses NEAR the start of the diagonal crack of P2 (viewable in February, anyway- likely viewable any time of the year). This provides an objective; climb whatever way (safely) possible to achieve the small ledge associated with this clump of grasses).
And, when Bill and I did this a few days ago, we choose different belay stances than that listed above. We made P3 shorter (by belaying in the scoop at the bottom of the short face/corner and just above (20 ft) the step across) and P4 longer.
This is a great multipitch adventure climb with some excellent sections of plates and chickenheads. The chimney pitch/step across is cool. The higher you go, the better it gets. My ropegun partner fired off the trickiest and most committing pitches so I could sit back and enjoy the views. One note. There are two sets of rappel anchors at the top. Use the ones back and left that drop into the gulley.
And water A spring A pool among the rock If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada And dry grass singing But sound of water over a rock Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water
The Wasteland
RSS Feed
