Crack Kingdom 

This is my favorite of the routes I've done on Cardinal. The pitch3 finger crack is truly stellar.

Got a left knee stuck in the off-width exit move on P-2. Never thought it would come out and had visions of that dude in Utah who cut off his arm. At first I thought it was a cool, no hands rest, only to discover the knee had cammed in there pretty good. Took about half hour to free and now my knee is the size of a small, seedless watermelon. Great route, though.

Very cool climb. It seemed to be a much more physical climb than West Face, but OW and hard fingers will do that.

First pitch - the always slightly devious 5.10a shared with West Face then move the belay left to aim up at the obvious o-dub.

Second pitch - the offwidth isn't too bad and afterward you basically alpine scramble in terrain that is cool but a little head's up since you don't want to knock any chock stones down. 5.10b.

Third pitch - pull the roof after the cool dihedral and go up a ways to the crux exiting the finger crack into the chimney for some burly and technical climbing. I ended up facing left and getting a high foot onto a sloping crack rail to get past the crux. It just took a lot of juice figuring that out. From the chimney traverse left into some marbled, crystal-studded rock that is like a stamp of approval from the Norse god of climbing and finish on some thin hand jamming. Just to excite your second, somehow completely forget to clip your pro in the 5.9 thin hands exit crack like I did. WTF? 5.10c.

Fourth pitch - the final kick in the pants - you could definitely blow the onsight here! A strange but cool 15 foot 5.10b boulder problem finds you crimping all out on a huge thin flake over tiny pro only meant to keep you from landing on your belayer (you'd most likely ledge out on a fall). Scramble up and right to a short rappel that lands you at the usual Prow rap descent anchors. 5.10b.

I guess a bit of scrambling here and there makes up a fifth pitch, as there are five pitches denoted in this description? Regardless, it is fairly unlikely to link any pitches unless one is comfortable simuling at the 5.10 level.

There is some loose stuff on this route and the slope of the ground follows you so sometimes the exposure isn't as wicked as it could have been, but, overall, the climbing is fantastic.

For the rack, I'd rec doubles from fingers to #3 camalot and singles in #4 and #5 Camalots (C4) plus a set of nuts.