Beiser leading out the first pitch along the dihed...
Description
This pleasant & apparently popular route ascends an actual line up the right side of this low angled, difficult-to-decipher slab. 25-30min hike from the Fall River Road Visitor's Center. Nice south exposure for fall climbing. This route is right of the nadir of the face, right of Indirect, right of Direct, starting up a small, inviting, left-facing dihedral. Good rock here.
P1. Carefully go up a slippery, left-facing dihedral (crux), with a small roof that forces you to jog left. Continue up the dihedral with good face holds left to a tree.
P2. Fire up and right on face holds with intermittent cracks and belay either at a large block or up higher to trees.
P3. Go up a left-facing dihedral and continue easy, pleasant climbing to a big ledge with trees.
P4. Go up slabs and overlaps, angling to the right to a ledge system. Exit right.
Rap 100 feet (or downclimb) and hike down the right side of the crag to the base.
Protection
Standard rack to #3 1/2 Friend/#3 Camalot. 60m rope useful.
I "maybe" did this "route" 2 years ago and I'm still itching to get back to McGregor's ! As all the posters in the general McGregor's header say " I really don't know where I was at after the 1st pitch but there's nothing harder then 5.8". I found McGregor's to be a mellow adventure climbing outing that I hadn't experienced in many a year ! This face is SOOO ! featured that any topo/route description is ABSOLUTELY useless ; but if you love the adventure of just picking out what looks like fun and don't need a guide book to hold your hand, this is a fantastic place to go. Be forewarned though, that what looks like a 2-3 pitch stroll at the base is really 5-6 full rope stretchers to the top. The descent is LONG !! and not marked at all towards the end to where to turn up to find your packs at the base! All said, this rock is highly recommended for the adventurous climber looking for an alternative to the follow- the -chalk climbs of Lumpy or Eldo.
Dry as a bone and not a cloud in the sky; July 2001
This is for the "route" that we ended up taking after the first pitch (or 2 or 3, who could tell?).
5.8 the way we went with a lot of 5.6R thrown in to keep the interest up.
Climbed here today, starting on or just left of Right Standard. The path we chose up the rock was probably some amalgamation of Right Standard, Climbing With The Camel Man, and random features. We climbed 5 long (150'+) pitches plus a little scrambling to get up and over to the east side (where we found a rap station to get us down to easier downclimbing territory). Our pitch two had a fun little offwidth that ran for about 15', and pitches four and five had some interesting unprotected (but positive holds) traversing sections. Very joyful climbing!
Old Fart is absolutely right; it'd be very difficult/humorous to try to follow any specific route descriptions. Take a look up at the rock when you're in the parking lot, pick out a couple landmarks on the formation for reference, then hike up and start climbing.
Climbed this on May 27, 2007. Great day, fun route, 4-5 long pitches. I agree with the above two posts on the routefinding descriptions (emphasis on ‘finding!’), for most of the climb it went like this: 'maybe we need that dihedral, or the overlap over there, or the one next to it.…' The good thing is that getting off route didn't seem to get us into trouble, there seems to always be an overlap or dihedral offering good pro and moderate moves to get through. I did notice a lot of rap stations (trees at the top of pitch 1 & 2, bolts at ledge top of pitch 3) that would facilitate an easy rap descent from the first 3 pitches (except for maybe rope drag when pulling a rope).
We walked off by gaining the summit and downclimbing ledgy class 3ish rock for a bit into a fallen tree-choked gully (but try to contour close to rock so you know when to start traversing for your pack, we ended up going WAY too far down and had to repeat about ˝ the hike back up, just like Dave mentions).
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