Scott Conner starting up the hand crack. The crux...
Description
This is a great climb on the far left side of Sleeping Beauty. To locate the start, hike the trail along the base to a series of vegetated ledges on the left side. You will scramble back up and to the right to the start of the climb. Look for a right-facing corner with a nice, hand crack that leads to a small bulge/roof with a single bolt at the start. This is Jungle of Stone. To the right of this corner is a dark black streak on a slab with bolts (Black Rain 10b).
Start right behind a large tree at the base of a slabby ledge. Clip a bolt, work up into the corner, get good pro and handjams and pull over the roof (crux). Somewhat insecure climbing and sparse pro lead slightly up and left to a good stance. Traverse up and right past a small tree and onto the slab, clip the remaining 3 bolts of Black Rain and finish at the 2 bolt anchor shared with Black Rain.
Rappel 120' back to the base.
Protection
Gear to 3" plus 4 QDs for bolts. Double red and yellow Camalots are useful.
By Ron Olsen Administrator From: Boulder, CO Sep 4, 2003
A fun route with a variety of moves: stemming, hand jamming, a roof, and a slabby face. Too bad the route is still quite dirty and mossy in spots (see photo). Two stars for the moves, but downgraded to one star because of the uncleaned rock.
The rappel route runs through the middle of four small trees; pull the ropes carefully to avoid a snag.
Climbed Jungle of Stone on 6/27/04, and we found it to have cleaned up nicely since Ron's photo of last fall. A quality route, one of several excellent trad cracks on Sleeping Beauty.
I also agree that this is an excellent route. It looks dirty but climbs clean. Jamming and stemming at about 5.8 lead to the roof. A couple of crux moves pass the roof, and then an insecure move gets you into slab climbing when the crack runs out. I didn't think the pro was scarce at that point. I had a good but shallow medium sized cam. The slab is pretty easy, and you can climb it left of the Black Rain bolts if you want to climb a slightly separate line. This is a good climb on which to practice nut craft. Bring a single set of nuts and a single set of cams. The nut placements are excellent.
By Ron Olsen Administrator From: Boulder, CO Sep 12, 2004
The route has cleaned up nicely since last fall; solid climbing from start to finish.
From the anchor, you can rappel back to the start with a 70m rope,with about 5 feet of rope to spare.
By Ron Olsen Administrator From: Boulder, CO Aug 17, 2005
Consider anchoring the belayer to the tree by the start; the ledge is exposed.
Ivan Rezucha said: "This is a good climb on which to practice nut craft. Bring a single set of nuts and a single set of cams. The nut placements are excellent."
Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. I didn't place any nuts, but did place several tricams, several Aliens, two #1 and two #2 Camalots, and a #3 Camalot.
At the crux bulge there is a big flake about 2 feet right of the main crack. If you use this flake for your right hand, rather than jamming both hands in the crack, you can stem right past the bulge at about 5.8 (maybe even 5.7+) because you can make better use of the good left foot holds in the crack which you can't seem to use properly if you are straight in jamming the crack.
South Pillar
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