Mighty Thor 

As I remember it the first couple bolts are a lot of fun and require a good bit of balance as you smear up the seam. The climb gets its rating fromt he crux moves at the white headwall above the seam. It it easier the taller you are but there are good spots to rest in before and after the crux that helped me a lot. From the bolt above the crux traverse up and left to get to the anchors. The traverse presents a minor penduluming danger but thankfully has fairly good footing to the ledge with the anchors.

Some key beta for this one: First of all, Mighty Thor takes every inch of a 60m rope to TR. 2 - For some reason, I seem to remember that you need 14 quicks/slings to lead it, although I've only TR'ed it, so I'm not sure. 3 - If you're 8' tall, you should be all over this route. That crux move is an off-balance, reachy son of a...

It might be as much as 14 QDs. Half the fun of this great route is dealing with rope drag and avoiding Z-clips through and above the crux section. Not that I minded the extra pro ...

I think I counted you using thirteen draws on this route, Darin. It definitely behooves the leader to NOT clean the last three draws or so of this route, as a fall at the crux implicates a pretty good-sized pendulum (translation: the second would have a devil of a time getting back on route).

The crux move is in the middle of a fantastic sequence, when the main headwall begins to loom menacingly over the intrepid climber. You're gonna explore the limits of Stealth rubber on this one!

Explore them I did as I took a pretty major whipper whilst attempting to clip the second bolt. It actually wasn't the stealth, however, instead my flight having its beginnings in the left hand that popped off of a pinch. A bad fall it was, too, for as I put my hand out in front of me the rope found itself wedged between it and the rock and glided along my palm giving me an unforgetable burn. Ouch! This route is amazing and tricky. I also love that old Garden drilled angle for pro thing. You'd think people would wise up and stop climbing in the Garden, eh? Not bloody likely!

The scariest part about this climb is the heinous american triangle for the anchors. I say that whoever wants to climb it cut off the frayed cable and bring a couple pieces of webbing with them and rig the anchors correctly. The frayed cable is destroying the piece of webbing on there and would destroy any other webbing someone might put on it too.

Cable anchors are in bad shape; one of the cable threads has snapped, and the remaining two or three aren't far behind. Also, the cable is placed in the "triangle of death" fashion. I left a short blue 1" sling equalized through 2 of the 3 pins, that being all I had at the time. Be cafeful....

Most of those cable anchors seem to be placed as triangles.

Noticed about 4 of the pins were bent. I'm 6'2 and had enough wingspan to reach the bucket semi gracefully. I feel sorry for shorter climbers on this one. The cable anchor has been backed up by webbing and is safe.

Mighty Thor has new anchors! Stewart Green and Brian Shelton replaced the old pitons (including some stamped 1952) with three 5-inch-long stainless steel sleeve bolts with stainless steel descending rings. Many thanks to Climbing Magazine and Petzl for donating the new anchors. The old ones were definitely a hazard with a frayed cable and brittle webbing.

Thanks, guys! That frayed cable/random sling/old piton set up *may* have been safe, but it never looked it.

There's a bail quickdraw up on this route as of today. FYI.

I hate to say it but I busted a hold off the start of Mighty Thor. Somewhere around the 25 ft mark there is now a gaping flat spot where a beautiful blocky chunk used to be. It was a great hold for your left hand, but when I got my foot up on it it busted, depositing me into the arms of my belayer.