By Paul Heyliger Jan 11, 2007
| I hate to add a third route name to the mix, but I did the first ascent of this climb in April of 1988 with Tim O'Grady, and we called it Crown of Thorns (it was just past Easter and the rock was prickly). We placed the first and last bolts and used gear in the dihedral. The route was later retro-bolted by someone else, which is fine with me. My notes say 10c/d, but we were terrified of overgrading and I suspect the 11a/b grade is closer to the mark.
I'll point out here that Tim and I also did the first ascent of the line to the right of Larry that has appeared in several guides as The Plum, and I think mistakenly graded at 10a. Again, we placed only the first and last bolts and used gear in the middle section. We graded it (I thought conservatively) at 11b, and can only hope that the 10a grade was a guess from the ground. The route is named Drop the Pilate (as in Pontius, not the singular of Pilates).
We also did a very short route on the far left end of the Dark Side (Capone, 3 bolts, 10c) which does not deserve a write-up and is probably best left to obscurity. |