Englishman's Route (the way we went). Photo by Bli...
Description
Englishman's Route climbs the upper half of the 2nd buttress on Hallett. The most direct approach to Englishman's Route is to climb the bottom half of Better Than Love, but one could climb the Love Route, Culp-Bossier or Hesse-Ferguson. From the ground you can see a big black right-leaning crack above the white band that divides Hallett in half and to the right of the roof on the Love Route. The crack looks wet and it was wet when I did it. Fortunately, you stay to the right of this feature on beautiful face holds thus staying dry. This description only includes the pitches from the white band to the top.
Set your belay high up the white band or be willing to simul-climb or stop short of the belay I describe (there is another belay, slings on a chockstone in the big black crack with a sloping stance).
P1. Work your way to the crack then follow face holds and intermittent cracks on the face to the right of the big black crack. Positive holds lead to a nice but small belay (big nut and medium cam). Pro is good but like all routes in the area, it's a little run out.
P2. The next pitch follows more of the same holds but in the middle of the pitch you will have to traverse to the big black crack to find pro (#2 & #3 Camalots.) The pitch moves right with the crack until you come to an overlap. Crank over the overlap and establish a belay up and left. One could also go straight up or traverse right to other routes but we followed the photo from Scott Kimball's book.
P3. From here, it was one long pitch to the top with a 60m rope. We went left up a small right-facing corner for 10 feet then traversed left on face holds under a small roof until arriving at a small left-facing corner. Sparse pro but more of those delightful face holds. The left-facing corner leads to the top but is broken up with a few ledges and a little more face climbing. Watch out for rope drag or break the pitch into two.
I felt that all of the pitches were a grade easier then what is given in the guidebooks. You just have to piece together the face holds correctly. The 5.8 pitch on Better Than Love was the crux of our day. Excellent rock, nice belays and killer exposure. It is a good choice if you have done the other classics on Hallett or if those routes are crowded.
Todd Pett and I climbed this route yesterday. P3 as described was wet (near the traverse left under the roof), so I downclimbed back to the belay and we traversed right as in Blitzo's photo. This finish might also be followed by folks on the Culp-Bossier who (by mistake) go left of the roof on pitch 7 of that route.
So on our third pitch (above the white band) we went up and right 50 feet, then up a white corner which had an old angle piton in it. There was quite a bit of chalk in this area (while none below), which makes me suspect it is from folks coming from the Culp-Bossier. We then did a 4th pitch more or less straight up which was rather exciting (and no chalk!), probably the crux of the route for us.
Click for an excellent Photo of the upper section of this face (viewed full size).
Hallett Peak
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