Warren about to begin the runout section to the tr...
Description
Another amazing route on my new favorite Flatiron.
Begin just around to the right from the steep south face of Seal Rock. A small flatironette called the Pup leans up against Seal Rock here, and they are separated by a wide crack. Climb this crack for 30 feet or so, then cut left and head up the East Face, aiming for an obvious tree. This pitch is the crux of the route. There is a mossy shallow water trough below the tree - I climbed to the right of it.
From the tree, cut hard to the left (but still go up) on much easier terrain. After another rope length you will find a large chickehead that will make a great anchor. This isn't the mother of all chickenheads, but it's certainly your favorite chickenhead's big brother. From here, head up a few more rope lengths, picking back and forth as necessary to find the easiest way. Eventually you will be trending back to the right, and the summit is not much further.
By Guy Humphrey From: Fort Collins CO Feb 26, 2002
There is an exciting runout after you leave the wide crack on the first pitch. You can get some gear about 20 feet after leaving the crack and a few feet below the 1st belay.
If you stay far enough left on the upper part of this route, you can climb up a cool indistinct rib on the far left side of the face which leads directly to the summit. If you stray rightward you will intersect the North Side route and can finish on the crack on that route. I never have found that chickenhead!
What a great route! It is noticeably harder in a few spots than the E. face North Side, but overall did not feel as sustained to me.
An alternate start is to do only the first move or two in the crack described (and pictured) and pull left onto the face for excellent slab climbing in the 5.3-5.4 range. These moves are unprotected, but the difficulty eases off quickly.
If one chooses to climb straight up from the tree for a piece before cutting left, there is a fairly large band of slippery sandstone to traverse in order to regain the north edge. While probably not more than 5.4, this would be hard to protect. It felt somewhat spicy to me, and in retrospect going left earlier would have been better.
A stunning view and excellent marine life (and vexing questions as to how it got there) in the pools on top of Seal Rock make this a worthy undertaking!
I think I found the chicken head or maybe it should be called the buffalo head. Climb about 30 ft up from the tree and then traverse across to the south. You should bump into it before you hit the ridge.
The belay that I typically use at the top of the second pitch on this one could be the mythical chickenhead: it's a smallish flake above a large one, and it leans back at an angle parallel to the main rock. It looks more chickenheadish than flakish, though. I sling it and then slot a couple of nuts above the sling with a large cam below for opposition. From the second belay I tend to go straight up, in order to avoid the slick dark-red rock, but it gets a bit runout thataways; if you go right from the second belay, you hit the 100' finger crack pretty fast. (Does anyone go farther left, onto the red rock? If so, what is that like?) With a 60m rope it is a total of four pitches from the ground to the rap anchors; a nice variation is to use the third pitch to traverse directly right to the base of the finger crack, which then results in a total of five pitches.
Beautiful climb! We wound up combining this route with the North Side after the first pine tree. This certainly didn't detract from climbing the east face. There are a couple of rappel stations. We used the recently placed rainbow slings for what was a fairly civilized rappel... much nicer than I was led to believe :-)
Seal Rock
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