By John Langston Dec 5, 2007
| I added this route to gain a little info on it. The guide refers to it as 5.12 and the description is "The crux ascends the ceiling via hand jams."
Well, no. The route does go into the big roof crack. Pulling the roof is done on handjams (it's bolted though trad gear would be less in your way and easier to place on this route), and it goes at easy 12 or 11+. That isn't the whole route though.
This is where it gets funky and confusing. Above the roof, there is a little, wide crack with a hand crack in the back that goes up at 5.9 and is clearly the natural line. I didn't bring gear, so I ran it out through this but the climbing is easy. Once up top there was no anchor, tree, nothing.
The line as it's bolted traverses right past three bolts and shares an anchor with "Lord of the Rings". The traverse is substantially harder than the roof crack. I mean it's not even close. If the roof is 12a, the traverse is 12c. This is compounded by being in a funky (though possibly clean) spot to take a fall all the while heading out a highly contrived traverse away from the natural line.
The Rolofson guide indicates that you head straight up through some bolts and to an independent anchor. No such bolts or independent anchor exist.
The climbing through the natural line is great though, the descent is sort of a pain. The climbing through the contrived line is far harder than the roof crack and shares an anchor with "Lord of the Rings". Just keep that in mind. |