East Face Gully aka Silk Road 

Really an awesome route. The conditions window for it is extremely short, so if you think it might be "in", get up there.

I recall wishing for a #3.5 or 4 (old style) Camalot for the wide layback to the tree belay. Other than that, just your standard Flatirons ice rack. Heh!

Hey. I thought you guys might like this video on the Silk Road :

www.travelistic.com/video/show/1982

In the summer this is the route East Face Gully.

Ha Ha. That video is nice but the wrong Silk Road.
I climbed SR 2 years ago. It was thin but fun. Much thinner than the tr on here. The start along the side of the big boulder is tricky with crampons and ice tools but after that it's nice up to the tiny cicle crux. If you shorten the 3rd pitch then both the 2nd and 3rd have great belays tucked back under a ridge. Good pro slinging the tree. Used a few cams and a nut or two for the whole route. After the crux, we went left to the large ledge and then up the face and topped the ridge by the little tree just a couple of gendarmes away from the summit.

As George stated, this route has been known for over 50 years as the East Face Gully NOT Silk Road. It is wrong and incorrect to assign another name for this route just because it has also been climbed as an ice/mixed route.

Jack, I just used the name from your old guidebook. I think that it is kind of nice to have a separate name for these routes as ice routes because scratching up them on a cold winter's day is a remarkably different experience than cruising up it in a pair of rock shoes on a warm summer evening. You also frequently end up climbing slightly different features. That said, I would be happy to change the name.

Climbed this gully on Feb. 10, 2011. Full 60m runout to first belay, no pro, but easy climbing on good ice, snow. Second pitch, with no ice, required awkward layback behind flakes to trees. Our next pitch took us past the ledges (delaminated ice) where we chose to traverse to a tree (right of route) and start descent.

Overall, a great outing, I'd like to try this again when there is more ice and continue to the top!

Anyone know if this is in right now and what the ice quality is?

During an amble up the east face of the First this morning, I noticed a ton of crampon marks on the north ridge. It seems to me that there should be a dialogue about whether it is appropriate to be climbing the north ridge in crampons. The north ridge is enjoyed by lots of people. The rock is relatively soft, so it is easily affected by crampons and there is a pretty natural way to get off Silk Road without heading to the summit. I think that it would probably be best to preserve the condition of the rock on the north ridge. For some perspective, perhaps we should look to the UK where it is considered a faux pas to climb classic rock routes as mixed routes unless they are completely white with rime. I think a similar perspective makes sense on something here that is as well travelled as the north ridge of the First Flatiron so the thousands of people that climb it every summer can enjoy it.

I share Ben Collett's concern here, regarding crampon scratches in the rock of the North Arete (or anywhere that is a popular, or even non-popular, rock route). When Kirk Miller and I did Silk Road in late Jan. 2007, we exited right, a pitch above the end of the gully, and found an established rap anchor, allowing us to do one 60-foot (?) rap to the ground from the ridge. I admit that our frontpoints hit rock at times during our climb.

I've always wondered if this is a problem. Do you think there is damage to the rest of the route as well?