East Face, Left Side Cracks 

I think this route (at least as we did it) is much longer than 800 ft. We did somewhere around 8 pitches, with 4-5 of them rope stretchers, on a 70 m rope, just to get to the large ledge (shared with East Ledges route) below the top section.

I believe we started left of the location indicated in the beta photo (just right of the left-facing corner, below a roof about 80-100' up. We then did a fairly easy, but heady and poorly protected traverse right to reach a wide, right angling crack, which we followed to an enjoyable 5.6 hand crack. From there, we followed a variety of grassy left-facing corners and broken crack systems to the upper ledge.

I think the upper section only backs off in difficulty if you follow the East Ledges to the top. We did not climb the upper pitches (got a late start and ran out of day light and energy), but they are supposed to be 5.7 climbing.

The descent from South Buttress is possible with one 70 m rope, or one 60 and some down-climbing.

The Kelsey guide book, "Wind River Mountains", lists this as a route that can be easily escaped for those not wanting a one day ascent of Pingora. Doing this route in August, 2008, it was hard to say where the exit could be found. The route begins at about the lowest section of rock on the wall, and we did it in 13 roped pitches, though some were mostly fourth class. After many pitches, maybe 6 or 7, there were several pitches of high quality 5.7, so be prepared for such grades. After doing several of those and having the time go by quicker than expected, my partner and I began looking for the easy way up the top section, while also searching, fruitlessly, for the rappel. Even without going to the summit, we had to come very close in order to get to the rappel--I'd say we were less than 100 easy feet of climbing from the summit when we spotted the anchors.

If you are a moderate climber, be ready for a full day of climbing with many excellent quality pitches on this route. None of the guides we found provide enough detail to always know you are on route, but it was true for us that we could pick the best available line and end up doing 5.7 or less difficulty while climbing mostly quality rock.

There are two escapes if one chooses to use them. One is after the first 3-4 pitches, where the angle eases, you can traverse off to the left and rap/downclimb a wide low-angle gully. The other is the original east ledge route high on the rock.
Two good starts also. One is the parallel cracks in the middle of the face, the alternative (on crowded days) is a left-facing dihedral 30' to the left of the cracks. (see photo)

Plan on about 12 pitches, the most interesting are up high.

When I climbed it, there was a party flailing in the parallel cracks so we used the left-facing dihedral to scoot around them. After a couple of nice 5.6 pitches, we veered right for a few pitches on low angle slabs to get back on line. Then 2 pitches in a nice hand crack followed by a obvious dihedral brings you to the East Ledges route. Above that 2 more difficult pitches (5.7) to the top. Fun route and much easier than the classic NE face.

This is a great route with lots of offwidth. I think that it is at least 1500 feet though. We did it in 8 long pitches, and we simulclimbed on three of the pitches. All pitches were rope stretchers with 60m ropes. We even thought that this route was better than the classic pingora line, and the way we went it seemed comparable in difficulty. I'd also say that if the classic line is Grade IV this is grade IV as well.

I recently climbed this route on July 9th, 2010. Every guidebook I read stated that this was a 7-8 pitch climb. Truthfully, it was quite a bit longer than that, more like 11-12 pitches, unless we were way off route. The climb felt very strait forward and the cracks obvious, so I don't believe we were off route very much if any.

The climb is really quite awesome, hand cracks, fist jams, or any appendage you can squeeze in a crack works well. There is a traverse on the 4th pitch (or 2nd - cant remember), that really gets the blood pumping. On the traverse there is great friction, but no real "holds" so be confident when doing it.

On the repel, again the guidebook said just repel off the Southwest Buttress, but again that was a little vague. You do in fact want to repel of the Southwest Buttress, but know that the first repel station was not existent and you need to set up your own and repel down the small gullies to the "1st" repel station. You can probably do the first little repel to the repel station unroped, but we had snow up there and it was just better to be on a rope. Once you get to the 1st repel station its really strait forward. We used a double 60m rope and it worked really well and gave us enough rope to get from station to station w/out downclimbing.

Have fun - its a blast.