The approach from the campground is about 15 minutes to the first route. Routes are listed in Knapp from north to south, but as you approach from the south, it is necessary to do a little route finding. The trail takes you to Freeform wall, where you can find a cutoff trail to the Contest Wall, or continue north and find the routes. A 60m rope is good, and 10- 12 draws will get you up routes with a few to spare. There are moderate trad leads around, and some of the bolt routes will take gear if you so choose.
Eds. As per a suggestion for better reorganization, we'll reorganize this section into the Sand Gulch area with subareas of Freeform Wall and Contest Wall. Note, much of this began as a organic coalescence of information developing from a school project which became known as climbingboulder.com.
Getting There
The Freeform trail provides access to the Sand Gulch canyon, which is oriented north - south, with the Freeform wall on the east side (facing west) and the Contest Wall just across the canyon. Obviously, this is an excellent choice for either being in the sun or avoiding it, as crossing the canyon from one wall to the other is a trivial hike or bushwhack.
A really fun jug haul, just climb carefully through on easy ground to the very high first bolt. Located on Contest Wall two climbs past Miller Time. Climbs up the moderately steep south face and arete. This route has so many huge holds it felt easy for the grade, especially if one used holds on the arete near the top. Savor those handles!...[more]
For people not familiar with this area, these routes are listed under "Freeform" as well. I don't know why they are posted as two separate areas. Both Contest Wall & Freeform make up the area known as Sand Gulch. Furthermore, some the routes listed here are re-named. For example, the route called "Eddy-D" is actually the route called the "Castrator" under the Freeform page (its proper name). If you don't know enough about an area, then don't develop the pages on this site and re-name routes that you did not get the first ascent on. The Admin team should clean this up due to the growing usage of this area, and the confusion that results from these discrepancies.
Sand Gulch
Printer Friendly View
RSS Feed
