This route is awesome! Perfect stone, great position, spicy, thoughtful climbing, and, most of all, a ridiculously improbable looking line make for an incredible, albeit shorter, afternoon in the Black.
Start: Head down the Cruise Gully. Shortly after the second rappel, the gully opens up briefly and an obvious climber's trail splits off left. Follow this for a short while (minor bushwhacking and scrambling) until it turns sharply left up to the wall and to the base of a long 20-30' wide right-angling ramp.
P1 & 2: Climb this ramp for two pitches (mostly 5.6 with a short section of 5.8). About 100' up you step left into a short, vertical dihedral, and then continue up on more rampy terrain. Belay at the end of the ramp at the base of an ugly squeeze chimney and directly below a huge flake that actually forms a nifty arch over your head (this flake is half-way up the wall and easily visible from routes across the gully and the rim). These two pitches probably total 250', but I highly recommend leading them in one with some simul-climbing.
P3: Head straight right out the steep slab using underclings and then disappear around the corner and onto a steeper slab: make sure to look down at the nothingness below your feet! Continue around the corner, clip a fixed pin, and head up a short crack (5.9) and face to the apex of the lower half of the wall. Belay here at a nice stance about 15' down and right from the long, intimidating, right-facing, right-leaning dihedral/roof.
P4: Make tricky, unprotected face moves above your belayer's head until you can stretch up and place gear in the obvious chalked up underclings of the dihedral. Work your way up this dihedral for 100' (calf-intensive 5.10) to a stance below where the dihedral arcs sharply right. Place a piece up high (long runner!) and step left around the arête and out of the dihedral using small face holds (crux?). Scary but wonderful. Clip a fixed pin and face climb up and left for 35' to an obvious stance for a semi-hanging belay. This pitch has the potential for a violent fall if you blow it before clipping the piton.
P5: Run it out straight up for 25' to a new Metolius bolt (5.9+), clipping a fixed pin on the way. Continue up 20' to a roof, place a #1 Camalot, and head right for 20' under this roof, once again using underclings and smears (easy 5.10). At an obvious weakness, pull over the roof (exciting!) and onto the face above. Head up and left on the face at easy 5.9 for about 50' (with occasional marginal pieces of gear) until you reach the nice ledge that transects the entire wall. Walk off left (passing the top of Maiden Voyage), or head right and up a final 5.9 pitch to the summit.
Protection
A single set of cams up to 3" with some smaller stuff (TCU's or Aliens) and a set of stoppers should suffice. Shoulder-length slings. Ed Webster sent me this email some time ago about the lone bolt on the climb:
Dear Joshua,
It was nice of you to write; thanks, and sorry it's taken me quite a while to respond. We did the FA of Checkerboard Wall with NO bolts. I've only done the route that once [ 21 years ago ] , and I never repeated it, but I heard through friends that someone ( I don't know who it was ) placed a bolt to protect that bit of dicey face off that exposed upper belay, and getting up to the big horizontal overlap on the second-to-last pitch. I was quite dismayed to hear about that bolt, and I take great offense to it, as it ruins the original quality of the route. I led the entire route when we did it ; and it took me a lot of concentration to figure out those thin face moves where the bolt is now, and to get up the nerve to do them, right above the belay ( and as I recall, a peg behind a flake for pro ) to reach the big overlap and plug in a friend under it. So, I would be very happy if you went up there next spring and removed that bolt. Hack saw it off, carefully hammer the stud into the hole, and epoxy it over with some rock dust to hide the hole if you can.
Thanks again for being in touch. And by the way, I'm living in Maine now; I moved away from Boulder 2 years ago. With very best wishes,
A good route with two excellent pitches. There is a bit of questionable stone, but not much. The gear tends to be good and the route is much less runout than the guidebook would indicate.
We did the route in three pitches. With a little simul-climbing you can easily reach the beginning of the 5.9 finger crack/face. From there you can do a long pitch to the shallow dihedral up high. One last pitch to the ledge. I thought the crux was the short lieback at the beginning of the long pitch, right after making the tricky face moves Josh described. Make sure you stay in the gully when hiking out. It's easy to get sucked onto some easy rocks on the left, but they don't go where you want.
By Charles Vernon From: I'm in transition right now May 25, 2004
I agree with Ross-this route is exciting, but did not seem terribly runout, at least compared to what I was expecting from the guidebooks. I led both 5.10 pitches, and didn't find either of them to be nearly as scary as Journey Home P1 (probably 'cause there's no potential to deck). However, after talking with Josh Janes, I believe there are 2 different ways to step out of the corner on the crux pitch. I stepped out at the first possible place, instead of continuing with the obvious chalked-up corner for 15 more feet. For me, getting to the pin invovled thought-provoking 5.10 moves, but there was some gear to be had (small nut--perhaps a yellow alien would have been better). I know of a couple of people who indeed have taken violent falls in the 25'-longer range from where Josh describes stepping out!
The last pitch has much more gear than you'd expect above the final overlap. The climbing on these crux pitches is great.
I stepped out a the lower spot as well. After setting the belay, I looked down at it and got the impression that the higher option looks a bit eaisier. I did manage a good small alien and a decent RP below the fixed peg.
This route is quite good but climbing it did not seem quite as cool as I thought it would after having looked at it from the Cruise Gully and routes on the west side of the gully.
P1 & 2: Don't see much advantage in linking these pitches -- there is a good fixed anchor at the end of P1 at a decent stance. Note: For those as clueless as we were, after the fixed anchor, go up, eventually joining a higher ramp which is parallel to the one you started on and which is not visible from the rope up point; alternatively, continue up the original ramp and do a sketchy 5.9ish connector pitch to rejoin the normal route.
P4: Traversing low, as per CV, seemed less hairy but the first move after the traverse, which is at least marginally top rope protected, seemed clearly the hardest on the climb.
P5: There is no need to "run it out ... for 25 feet" at the start as there are at least two good pieces before the pin. Don't wear yourself out looking for the "obvious weakness" in the roof; the weakness is juggy and maybe 5.8 -- you'll know it when you get there so keep traversing until you hit a spot where it appears relatively quite easy to go through the roof. The slab above the roof seemed to me to have OK gear and felt noticeably easier than the 5.9 on P3 although there is no obvious line and maybe I just got lucky and found an easy one. Hard to avoid rope drag on this pitch.
Several years ago, I did something different on the last pitch from what is described here. Instead of going left to finish on the upper slab, I continued up and right to a short seam. This seemed harder and scarier than the rest of the route. I wonder, does someone know what this is?
We climbed this route two weeks ago and froze on the first 4 pitches. "Walker, I can't feel my hands or feet." "Me either." The rock on pitch 4 was worse then I expected. Or maybe it just seemed bad because it was cold? But the sun came around for the runout pitch and all was good. Great route. Didn't seem to need the bolt. It's in a stupid spot anyways.
The Checkerboard Wall
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