Well this was certainly heady!! This totally gets an R. It is run out 5.10 slab climbing and it is great!! I slotted a pretty good nut at the bottom. It starts in a right angling seam. just keep moving...hesitation on this climb will get you "cheese grated!" or worse! I loved it!
FA was EFR and Bob Kerry in 1988. After crossing El-Kabong this climb comes very close to another route Babalooey near a horizontal weakness but heads back right and up. You have to wander around to find the good holds and keep it in the grade. A fall might be bad but you are more likely to get some road rash rather than grated like cheese.
I wouldn't give this route and "R". A soft PG-13 perhaps. It's no modern sport route but not too many years ago we would have called this a nancy boy clip up. It's a fun route.
Out of my inability to read a topo I ended up doing another variation where I finished on El Kabong once I joined it from the beginning crack on Quick Draw McGraw. It seemed to stay within the grade of solid 5.10 slab (i.e. only the bottom section of El Kabong before it joins McGraw is solid 5.11) and was pretty fun. On the Kabong finish, there's about a 15 foot run-out between the third-to-last and second-to-last bolt towards the top with some 5.8+/5.9 moves to get in position for the next clip. I just wussed out and went right and protected with a long sling + yellow Alien in the crack on "Sahrrite" and dealt with the horrible rope drag before clipping and back-cleaning.
These routes don't seem to get climbed much, a lot of the footholds were grinding and sloughing off small sections when weighted.
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