A significant roof bars easy access to the East Face of Red Devil (Berserker goes through the left side of this roof). This route begins at the far right side of this roof. Hike up the fern filled gully between Red Devil and Unicorn (the rock to the right of Red Devil). This soon turns to a slab right where the overhang runs out.
P1: Step/chimney onto the slab and head up and left. You may find a piece or two early on but I found the first 40' or so to be rather unprotected. The rock here is quite red, clean and generally excellent. Occasional odd knobby cracks give excellent protection, but the upper part of this pitch also involves runouts of 30' or more. It is about 65m to a pair of small pine trees (the route here merges with the upper part of Berserker). Belay here or rig a belay lower in one of the knobby cracks.
P2: Continue up an easier face with more lichen and several more trees. A large ledge will soon be reached. You can belay here or continue on up to the top (from the pair of small trees, it's about 50m to the top). There is [now a 2 bolt anchor on the south side of the summit from Hell Freezes.]
Walk off to the west.
Protection
Standard Flatiron Rock. Small/med cams work well on this face, large stoppers or medium hexes would also work well in several spots. Long slings for trees and knobs.
We were well off route this weekend, off rock, in fact. It always helps to use a guide book, but, that kinda takes the fun out of the Flatirons experience! We thought we were on the Back Porch to do a 5.6 east face with a 5 foot roof crack. The description we had read, had told us to start near a small arch 200 feet north up the east face. Funny that Red Devil has a somewhat similar feature. We started up, traversing back and forth across a gully, and pasing a couple small roofs until we ended up being able to downclimb to the real, red east face. After a short pitch, we ended up in a horizontal trough near the top. From this area, the summit was up and left, with an easy scramble to get there. There was a crusty looking, wide crack that went up from that same trough through a short roof. Climbed that, if it was done before, it was a long time ago. Cleaned some dead branches, and stuff out of it. It was actually pretty cool, a nice undercling lie-back to get into the wide part, then a short thrash to the top. Probably only about 5.8, and not really worth repeating due to the loose rock, and short length of the crack. But, fun to check out of you end up there. Just don't let this crag [throw] you off, Back Porch is further North, and maybe a bit west of Red Devil...
I recommend going to the summit. From the large ledge at the top of pitch two, follow the ledge up and south to a flat area. There you will see the first vertical east-west crack to the north of the summit. On the north side of this crack you will find an easy way up the corner, and up the crack. I went down into a bowl and there was an easy ramp up to the summit. The summit is protectable. Five feet west of the summit is a horizontal crack that I got couple of 1.5 tri-cams and red TCU in. The summit was quite comfortable. We ate lunch on the summit and enjoyed the views of The Box, The Finger, Back Porch, etc.
By Leo Paik Administrator From: Westminster, Colorado Dec 2, 2005 rating: 5.6
This "climb anywhere" slab is fairly runout if you stay to the R side. You may find 60+ft runouts. Staying R of Beserker, we found about 8 spots for pro in the first 2 pitches/360 ft. Also, the sun is off the face by 12p in Dec. Thin in spots, too.
I second Leo's comments. We found two decent pieces for pro in the first pitch, and the first was 40 feet off the deck. We ended up taking the third pitch out left to the ledge that sits underneath the last three bolts of Hell Freezes Over, and scrambled off the back from there. This route has a pretty heinous approach.
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