BETA PHOTO: Unnamed (9+) is in the center, I Promise.. is the ...
Description
This is the second farthest route to the left in the Hubbel guide. It is just a few feet left of I Promise... and has a dihedral/roof 10 or 15 feet up.
Start up the finger crack, and pull around the roof(5.8). Jam and smear up the thin finger crack (9+ or 10-), until a small overlap is reached where a good meduim cam can be tucked in.
Climb up the slab, stemming between, and placing a few small wires in the opposing 4 inch "dihedrals" . This was grassy and very serious when I climbed it in 2000 (5.9vs). The grass has been cleaned out since, and apparently climbs easier and offers better pro now. Belay at the ledge below the headwall.
Either finish with the second pitch of I Promise... rap off old fixed junk (right), or rap off a sling around a boulder (left).
Protection
Small wires and TCUs. #1 Rock and Blue Alien handy.
Funny, I just checked this out because I had climbed there years ago. The name is Karen Os' Sweatpants, I did the first lead of this pitch with Jim Morrison, Marc Hirt, and Dave Hague sometime around '80 or'81. I gardened on lead and Jim tried the steep corner of the second pitch; however the heavy lichen was too discouraging with marginal pro.
Good route! The start kinda reminded me of the first pitch of Gonzo at Eldo. Similar level of difficulty I thought. Pulling the roof is great fun and has very solid pro. Once you get up to the slab section I thought the difficulty steadily decreased (5.6ish towards the anchors) but so does the quality of the protection. Bring plenty of small cams / stoppers if you don't want to run it out. At this point it could still use a little gardening (which would probably open us some better gear placements on the slab section).
Note that the area around the base of this climb and adjacent climbs has a fair amount of poison ivy. If you have my guidebook, you might make a note of the PI hazard in this area of December Wall for future reference.
By tooTALLtim From: Boulder, CO Jun 13, 2009 rating: 5.9
Great start to a heady ending. RPs and small wires protect the slab well enough (now that there is less grass? There was still a bit, but some gardened out spots yielded good placements).
Referring to my first comment;I led this (gardening on lead), long ago. The name is Karen O's Sweatpants, after a girl who looked real good in same, (dark blue). Don't ask me to go to the trouble of changing the name.
Hi Scott and Joe - If this route gets renamed, I won't shed any tears, though I don't believe Huggins, Morrison, Hirt and Hague did the FA. Mason Frichette and Craig Lightburn climbed the route sometime in the mid-late 1970s. Frichette climbed all over Dec. Wall with various partners, and my research indicates they beat Huggins and company to this route and several others on the wall by several years. I had a long (several months, even stretching into a year) email exchange with Mason and Scott Woodruff as I filled in some of the history gaps in St. Vrain climbing; they looked at a number of my early drafts of the book, and were of tremendous help supplying accurate FA history. I'm sure that even with all the email/phone calls we shared, I still botched some info, but I'm pretty certain about this one. Mason may have more to say if he still looks at this site.
If I'm remembering correctly, the name I used in my book--Mnemonic Plague--was suggested by Mason. He was able to recognize numerous lines he had done in the past (this one included), but he couldn't always remember the names of the routes (often enough, there was no name to remember, because they didn't always give names to their adventures). In this case, he suggested Mnemonic Plague because of the difficulty he experienced during our ongoing exchange in remembering who he climbed with 30 years ago, what name (if any) they had used, whether it was 1976, '77, or '78 that they did Route X, etc.
Hope that helps clear up any confusion about the name.
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