The crux is getting to, protecting and climbing th...
Description
This is a nice TR or runout lead. Just left of Shiva's Dance, Monks in the Gym, and Skink's Lip. This follows a shallow, left-facing dihedral to an angling ledge, move right, and up into another, more-difficult dihedral to a ledge. Rappel 70 feet. Solid for the rating.
Old school 9+ for sure. I first climbed this in '78. Young and foolish? Don't remember, but probably so. No cams then, but did have RPs which are the key gear. Perhaps there were a couple of pins, but it was S back then also. Yesterday, I was maxed out repeating this. The shadows from the morning light made the holds and cracks look bigger than they are, so it seemed like this would be a good warmup. Bad choice! From the top of the left crack the gear was brass good for rightward pull, #0 TCU, tiny sideways brass good to the right. Then at the right crack, tiny brass sideways good for nothing. Then tiny brass that pulled through on the first test. A shallow regular nut in the same opening. Then, a decent brass higher than that. Most of these pieces were fair, but having so many just "fair" pieces in a row was really stressful. Double ropes are useful to prevent sideways pulls on the bottom nuts in the right crack.