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Easy slabs lead to the dihedral which is 5.7 and 5...
Description
Climbs the impressive dihedral and roof system to the left of 'Book of the Dead Chimney.' Looks much harder than the grade, but looks can be deceiving. Both of the cruxes felt no harder than 10b.
P1: Start on the right side of the face below the massive dihedral and roofs above. Work up and left on easy terrain until following cracks inside the big right facing dihedral. Continue and hand jam over the first small roof and belay before the bigger roof (8).
P2: Climb the first strenuous roof and wiggle up to easier terrain above, but don't head towards the original finish, instead jam the steep hand crack on the left wall up to the arete! Belay right here, peeking over to watch your second battle.
Climb directly left and down to 1st and 2nd tree or 3rd tree.
Rap 100ft from 2nd tree, or about 80ft from 3rd along the route Pharoah's Child.
Well, I guess some stars have to be taken out of this one. There are bird droppings on every sloper on the first pitch. I guess it is becuse its not visited often. Anyway, just to let you know...
Good route, but not as good as it looks. What seems to be a 20 foot roof at the top of the big dihedral is just a few awkward and difficult well-protected moves to get stemmed out left. After that it's a minor grovel, right side in, left leg stemming. The final crack is gorgeous--good to be back to normal climbing--but short. More of a finger crack/layback than a hand crack.
Jesse, in his original posting of this route, rates the climb 10a, but says "no move over 10b". Gillett says 10b for the first crux and 10a for the final crack. Doesn't much matter since the pro is good and cruxes are short.
No bird shit as of today.
By Tony Bubb From: Boulder, CO Jun 27, 2005 rating: 5.10b
You know, I was a little disappointed. The first pitch was "blah" 5.8. The second pitch opened with an awkward sequence with some bad rock, and I broke off the footholds on which I was stemming. I had I nice time on the last 40', but that's 40' out of 200'. Surely nothing to write home about.
With a 70m rope I lead from ground to 15' above roof/headwall, with very little rope drag, a much nicer pitch. Above the 5.0 section, my partner Trevor found really nice hand cracks on an arete going in the 5.7 range that made it a great outting.
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