Lizards & Scorpions w/ Sky on Tuesday 

A few notes on this route. It was good, but not a repeater until I've done many more routes- it was not nearly as good as a classic like Desert Solitaire, a few miles away. 3 stars if you consider some bad rock compulsory for a desert wall, otherwise 2 stars. As my partner phrased it: "This route must change every time it is done." Wear helmets and stay alive.

The route is 4 pitches:

P1: 5.11 thin hands and fingers with some layback and smearing. It is all of 25 feet of climbing and is the only physically hard climbing on the route. It is not that sandy and not 11+ unless you have BIG hands, but even then, I'd presume a big reach would come with that and allow you to totally skip the hardest move. The crux protects below a key jam on a 2" cam. That will be at your waist as you do the hardest move. Once your feet are here, you can work in other gear overhead from an OK stance. But how to belay up here without wide gear? You might get in that #4, or might climb up to the first fixed pin and work that into your anchor... There was some loose rock and sand here- I cleaned it out/off as best I could. The pitch seems clean now.

P2: The mental crux is going up the face past 3 pins, on sandy rock. At least the pins seem good, because this is unnerving. Then the chimney, which might be 5.8, and is very well protected with a single run of cams before exiting left to traverse on more sandy crap. I snapped off a handhold and don't know how I made it without a fall from around the crumbing finish corner. The bolt and pin belay needs an update- I finger-tightened the nut on the bolt, which wiggles a bit- perhaps owing in part to the fact that the sealant used around it 21 years ago (in 1985) has mostly come off/out. This has since been abandoned as a practice (the sealant) since it does not work. The pitch is less than 100' long.

P3: The best pitch, 125'- start off with a .75" cam or so, or maybe 2 of them and then go up to a hand-sized placement before reaching good rock. The above description of the route as needing "many hands sized" would be accurate if #3 Friends is the size of your hands. All those 2.5's we had, and gold Camalots were dead weight most of the way. And blue Camalots wouldn't quite fit. Nice exciting runouts were the result. Take maybe five #3's for this great pitch.

P4: I'd complain about all of the bird crap, but since most of the big blocks were securely held in place by it, thus making the climb possible, I'm not sure I have a gripe. The most insecure and dangerous move is protected above by a good large (but blind nut) if you climb and rap in rather than walk in, you could just leave this in... as we did. But then again, do you really want to climb a 5.7 "in poor form."

The route gets sunshine on P1 and the beginning of P2 around 10am, and the belays on P2 at about the same time. The upper pitch gets mid-afternoon sun.

For the approach, which was difficult to be sure of using the above directions... Easy to find, but hard to be sure of. The dihedral faces "climber's left" which is to say, "skier's right."
Find the climb by walking the edge and seeing a 5'X 8' pedestal/ledge recessed down 3' below the main rim. Step down onto this and look back towards the visitor's center, where a huge roof and corner block your views of the 2-pin anchor below the roof. Climb down a wide spot with a few 1.5" cams or tricams for protection for the "Second" and continue out and down for 70' until you at last reach the anchor. Coming around a loose corner (stacked blocks) was the mental crux.

You can get down with a few lines as such:
Climb down the P4 as described- fix and anchor at the top of P3 and set a single rope on it- single line tied, 50m, 60m, whatever... Rap that to the top of P2 (carrying your other rope, a 60m or 70m) Then rap to the bottom of P2 with a 60m (if you are skipping P1 as suggested) or to the base of the crack on P1 on a 70m that and pull your rope. You can now pull the lower line and do all but the top pitch unencumbered by the second rope. You pick it back up at the last belay and tag it out to the top behind you. We left water and a jacket on the anchor above P2 as well, you could also leave all the extra 3" rack of cams here, 'cause you don't need it all for the bottom 2 pitches and it would get in the way in the chimney. But we were not that smart...

Actually the first pitch, from the ground, is quite good climbing. Maybe it has cleaned up a bit over the years. I did it on March 16, 2007 and thought it was one of the cleaner sections on the whole route. Good, hard moves to get you warmed up fast. Enjoy!
Great route to do as a back up when your intended route is being aided extremely slowly!