Nuclear Polka 

Does P1 go up the left facing dihedral right from the start, following the very thin RP crack? If so, is that really 5.9, as stated in [Gillett's] old guidebook? Looks much harder.

It feels harder too! I think it used to have fixed pins it. I thought it was funky and felt like mid 5.10. It does protect o.k with small stuff. It's worth it for the short, but perfect steep handcrack above.

I just climbed it yesterday and really liked it. The first dihedral looks like it will be an RP crack, but on the right wall of the dihedral is a 1/2" crack which offers great pro and a lieback for fingers. The only RP I had to place was the section just after the dihedral just before pulling out of the crack system onto the right arete. There was nothing fixed at the top of the "1st pitch", so I continued up the second to the juniper tree. Fun hand crack over a bulge at the end. We rapped off to the right with just our 60M rope and that worked fine. Give this bad little route a try!

MUCH better than it looks from the ground.

I too have always wondered about the exact line of this route. To me going straight up the small left facing dihedral seems the logical line, but this feels more like 10d to me. I always slotted a tiny TCU in the 3/8 inch crack and layed back on it reaching far to the right to catch a good hole on a flake thereby avaiding the dihedral and instead using it for my left hand only with my right taking holds on the face. Then 15 feet or so below the right side of the big roof I [joined] the dihedral again and took it up past the roof. This variation felt 10a. But, who knows? Fun route, though. I first [climbed] it in '93 or so and have never seen pitons in it.

Not sure what people are talking about by saying this route is "much better than it looks." My partner and I both were drawn to it from well down the hill, and it didn't disappoint. We only did the first pitch because the hand crack looked short and trivial, but maybe we missed something. The first pitch was excellent: Keeps coming at you, with much more hard climbing than you'd expect. Pro is adequate but only PG at the bottom, and you have to work to get good pro in the upper left-facing corner. Surprisingly, the best protected part is the section where you think you're only going to get RPs! We rapped with one 60m rope from the horn above the roof, which seems perfectly solid.

The route looks better from down the hill than it does from below. The corners look steep from down the hill, then when walking up they looked low angle, but then from below and climbing they are indeed pretty steep, but the route looked pretty ugly to me. The pro sucks pretty much at the bottom up to the block that looks loose but isn't. There's a ring pin low down that is relatively recent (little rust). We climbed the middle corner left hand and left foot in the corner, right hand and right foot out right (see photo). The upper corner has less than perfect gear, but enough of it to make it safe. A #3 Camalot is useful just below the big roof at the end of the hard climbing. Rossiter's topo shows 10a up higher, but that can't be right.