Kirk Hansen midway through the fingery crux pitch ...
Description
The "Serenity-Sons" combo may be the best 5.10 crack climb in the Valley... it is just so, so good. Why anyone would do one without the other, I don't know, but since they are technically two separate routes, they are listed as such.
Serenity Crack is the crux of the linkup and comprises the first three pitches of the climb. Park at the Ahwahnee (the route is visible through the trees from the vallet area in front of the lobby) and hike in to the base.
P1: If you don't like manufactured climbs, just go home! This pitch is pretty unique -- I certainly have never seen anything like it: Hundreds of blown out pin scars the size of #1 Camalots create a practical ladder up the pitch. Unfortunately, secure gear is not available for a long, long ways, and this pitch is very unnerving to climb. Not only that but it is painful on the toes. Bring a full rack and be prepared to place cams in the flaring scars and sometimes great wires up higher. Belay at bolts. 5.10a.
P2: Climb beautiful 5.10a jams to a cruxy crack switch move higher (nice to have some small wires for this). Continue up more 5.10a to a bolted belay.
P3: Steep flakes and overhanging hands leads to a beautiful, thin splitter. The crux is a section of tips jams just before the belay. 5.10d.
Romp up the large ledge system to whatever belay stance makes the most sense for starting Sons of Yesterday.
Protection
Standard rack. Include some small wires for P2 and small cams for P3.
The supertopo says that the first pitch is really scary and wet and blah blah. But it is not that bad. There is good gear to be found. I think I got in Black and Green Metolius right around where the bolt is missing.
By Paul Hunnicutt From: Boulder, CO Oct 22, 2007 rating: 5.10d PG13
I don't feel this is PG-13 if you can take your time in placing gear and especially if you have offset cams, however the gear is tricky to place well. Metolius offset cams worked so well here. I highly recommend them for the Valley. I agree that this hurts the feet quite a bit. Every pitch is excellent and logically combines with Sons of Yesterday. If you live in Boulder and want to practice the crux of this climb (left leaning finger locks with smearing feet) climb 'Deviant' at Cadillac Crag in Eldo. The pitch 2 step across is awesome. You can get good small stoppers in before you make the move.
the pin scars on the first pitch made me want to vomit... i have no idea how they went so long before saying "hey, why dont we stop destroying this climb"...
after the first 40 feet the pin scars get much less disturbing and the climbing gets so much better i forgot about the negative aspects of the beginning and had a blast on the rest of the climb...pits 2 is super cool and the 3rd pitch (the crux) is so great, wow...
Royal Arches
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