BETA PHOTO: Location of Back of the Nineties from west side tu...
Description
Back of the Nineties is a north-west facing buttress that sits across the gully, as its name implies, behind the Wall of the Nineties. Three routes are located here ranging from 100-130 feet. These routes: Mission Vision, Aphrodite, and Priapos provide for some quick and nice afterwork climbing with steep and fairly continuous 5.10 and 5.11 climbing. Routes require about a dozen draws, and two ropes if you want to do the upper part of Mission Vision. Aphrodite is definitely the best of the three.
You can see the buttress from the parking area if you look just past Interstellar Overdrive at the far right side of Wall of the '90s.
Getting There
Approach by parking at Wall of the '90s/Mission parking, West side Tunnel 2. Continue as for the Mission Wall, but instead of walking downstream all the way to the tyrol, hike up the loose talus gully on your left. Stay close to the left wall where the "trail" is generally more solid. Apparently, touroids get their thrills by hiking this gully with Old Milwaukees to the top of Wall of the Nineties.
A few cairns may still be in place. At the tall branchless tree in the middle of the gully, contour over to the base of the wall. One tall pine tree is at the start of the routes. The climbs start off of a good ledge with a nice overhang to keep you dry and shaded. There is a belay bolt at the start of Mission Vision. Approach time is about 7 minutes from your car.
An alternate approach from Wall of the '90s is to continue past Interstellar up the ramp, and around the corner. 3rd class traverse into the gully. You will be about level with the base of Back of the 90s.
Oh yeah, this is another spot in Clear Creek where you don't hear traffic noise, and minimal creek noise. The view of Mission Wall is stunning.
The best route at Back of the Nineties. Aphrodite is the middle of the three routes, and is fairly sustained at the 5.10 level. This route starts on the left side of the crag base (near the huge pine at left side of overhang). Climb up the dihedral past a few clips to a mossy ledge. crank up and right over a trickey and slopey bulge.* Traverse right on good holds where the route steepens. Continue up past some thin face, layback flakes and ba...[more]Browse More Classics in CO
Good work guys. It's a lot of work to put up routes in Clear Creek, mostly cleaning the rock. I look forward to stepping over there & checking the routes out. It'll be nice to get on something that I didn't have to spend hours of scrubbing to do....
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