This is a challenging, physical route up the center of the east face of the Sorcerer. It is also the easiest way up the rock.
P1: Begin at the left of two massive right-facing flake/corners (the right is the start to Atlantis. Ascend this corner until it turns into a splitter crack and continue up. Eventually traverse right to the next crack system on some ramping flake features and up to a bolted belay. A long pitch; 5.10-.
P2: Continue up the crack system; 5.9 hands.
P3: The angle relents, but the climbing becomes very strenuous as the crack system turns into a flaring V-slot; 5.9+.
Descend to the north; see the description for the Sorcerer for more details.
By Chris Owen Administrator From: La Crescenta, CA Nov 4, 2006
Pitch 2 totally spanked me - I've never done anything quite like it. Perhaps I did it wrong...and I don't remeber P3 being particularly strenuous. Old age perhaps.
Pitches 2 and 3 can be combined with a 60 meter rope. Makes for a real long and strenuous pitch of climbing. If you do this, be very cognizant of rope drag.
I personally believe that the crux of the route comes right off the second belay despite the fact that that pitch is rated easier (5.9) than the previous pitch (5.10-). Won't say anymore about it; just don't think your difficulties are over just because you completed the hardest rated pitch.
Pitch 2: the trick to getting past the flared V is to layback the edge of the crack. It's kind of scary, but the easiest way. Directly jamming the groove looks burly.
Speaking from personal experience, directly jamming the v-groove sucks. Though normally a reserved climber, everyone on the adjacent spires had no problems hearing my frustration on this section.
A team ahead of us was rapping from the end of P1, advertising they "heard P2 isn't that good." Pardon the hyperbolic comparison, but this is like doing the Enduro Corner and blowing off the Harding Slot (not that I have). Thin Ice is all the better for the ways the ice suddenly thickens, P2 requiring altogether different skills. My two cents: do the route in two long pitches (so long as you're comfortable with running it out a bit on 5.8/9 handcracks -- the last sections of each pitch). The crux of P1 protects nicely with stoppers and small cams and involves face-climbing around the crack as much as not. The crux of P2, so abundantly documented above, is right off the belay, but then it keeps going. The liebackers are 5.12 climbers or, at the least, top-ropers. My angle: snug finger-locks with right hand; right toe in the corner/crack; left foot and knee in a kind of scummy knee-bar (see photo #2). Add a couple of comfortable stem stances and some chimneying and voila, a birth of the old-fashioned, grinding type. Belay below the summit (just above the Sentinel Oak) for protection from that Needles sirocco.
The Sorcerer
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