Pitch 1: Start on the far right side of the east face and go straight up to a left leaning ramp that leads to a gully with a belay tree under the overhang.
Pitch 2: (Rossiter) Climb past the right end of the overhang and head for the top. The first moves on this are unprotected 5.7 slab moves. (what we did) Head about 30 feet up the gully and look for a notch in the overhang. 10 feet past that is a boulder on the left side of the gully. Climb the Boulder, step over the gully and onto the overhang. Place a #1 Camalot and hand traverse right to the notch. Climb through the overhang via the notch. Be careful not to snag the rope in the notch. Climb towards the summit (middle 'finger') until you run out of rope.
Pitch 3: Climb a short pitch to the summit of the middle finger.
Descent: Rappel 100 feet. Downclimb to the south (class 3) or north (easy scrambling).
Protection
Like all Flatirons east face routes, this one is a bit runout. A 'Flatirons rack' consisting of a set of nuts, cams (#.5 - #4 Camalot) and two big hexes is more than adequate. Make sure you have a few big pieces.
Wow, Chris, is your variation really only 5.7? I can't recall any place going through the roof that looked that easy.
We climbed this route today and followed Rossiter's description. True, the climbing is runout on the face right of the roof, but there are some good handholds around most of the time. Eventually you can get a piece under an undercling, and the crux is doing a few layback moves on this same flake. Then it is much easier.
It's been a while since I wrote that description, but I don't remember our variation being any harder than 5.7 (similar to the 5.7 start of the 3rd). It was a little tricky to find the moves, but once we found them, they were solid.
I just did this and also found a 5.7 way to do it.
P1: (60M, 5.7) Climb the far right side of the Flatiron as described in the book or above, for 30M to said ledge. At the right of this ledge, perhaps 10' right is a slabby section that climbs to a 10' long right-facing flake. Climb up to and through this flake, but near it's top, step left about 6 feet to the next flake left, which is continuous with the right hand edge of the overhang previously mentioned. Continue up this flake and then up the rock for 20M more past it's end and belay.
P2: (50M, 5.6) Climb up from this, but rather than going into the gully to the summit, continue up and go right at the next ledge to intercept a nice finger crack, which leads up and left some 30' to the summit.
To descend, scramble down to the south into a notch and then West down to a rib of rock to the back side. A trail to the South and East will return you to the base of the East Face.
I should point out that the summit finish I describe is the North summit, not the South summit. It is a few feet shorter and the descent directions do matter. I feel that the N. Summit is a better climb as well.
By Leo Paik Administrator From: Westminster, Colorado Mar 14, 2003
Nice climb. Gosh, I think there are a bunch of ways to go on this rib of rock matching the general descriptions of East Face Right. Today, we did 2 x 60m pitches to the top of the R of the 3 summits. Decent pro. About 45m up was an interesting bit (though not overhanging) weaving L past 2 small R-facing dihedrals (the larger of which was +/- #4 Camalot size). There is an interesting exit off the R summit to the central summit block involving a fun, decently-wide stem across the notch/chimney separating the two, and then you can go up (to protect your followers) to the 2 bolt anchor and rap. Better than East Face Left of Der Zerkle, IMHO.
Der Zerkle
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