I have not climbed the whole route, (there are a total of three pitches) but the first pitch is great romp!
P1. A wolf in sheep's clothing, this is the bolted line just left of "A Little Insecure" and is described in the text but not shown on Rossiter's topo of the rock. I had gone up to do "Crash Test Blondes" and wanted to do a warm-up first. I saw this bolted line up what appears to be a low angle slab and pre-judged it to be in the 5.8-9 range. 6 clips later and a real good pump, I had changed my mind to at least 11b/c!. I never even knew what I had gotten on till a few days later when I finally read the route description in the book. I thought this route was technically harder than "Blondes", with great edging and a devious high-step crux on excellent rock!
P2. 2 5.10 cruxes. 10.
P3. According to S. Kimball, the last crux is on loose flakes. According to J. Collins, you can combing P2 & P3 in 90'. 9+.
I did all 3 pitches and liked the whole route. It is appt'ly named, as the crux is complex, but not so physically hard. I didn't high-step either. The first pitch was 5.11b or 5.11c and the second was 5.10. The third felt like 5.10 as well, but maybe that was the pump factor. I lead the first two pitches as one for sure, and if I remember correctly, I lead the entire thing as a single pitch on a 70M rope. Sorry, but I don't recall how much rope was left at the end. I did skip some clips and use some 2' long slings along the way to avoid drag. We walked off of the top.
The first pitch is a little ugly compared to the other routes nearby. The upper pitches look good, but I didn't do them. I'll be back for those pitches.
The first pitch seemed easier than two 11a's I did the same day, Led Astray and Cold Shot. One hard move between good stances. If it were trad, I'd call the first pitch 10b/c. I say that, because I more often than not cannot onsight 10c trad clean (I know that's redundant) yet I onsighted this quite easily. The rating of this may be consistent with modern sport climbing standards, but I can't say, being new to sport climbing after 30+ years trad.
If you don't do the 2nd pitch, then you're missing out. The first pitch, in of itself, is probably not two-star quality. I thought the better climbing was on the 2nd pitch. The position is also excellent, though there is a bit of looseness. Climbing all the way to the top from the anchors at the top of pitch 1 is about 90 feet of climbing and one 60m rope easily gets you back down to that anchor.
Upper Security Risk
RSS Feed
