By bergbryce From: South Lake Tahoe, CA Jul 17, 2011
| Great climb, with lots of options. You can choose your own adventure and make it as difficult or easy as you'd like. You can also stop after 3 pitches at the top of what I'd call the "East Summit". The climbing after this is un-memorable, requiring a long ridge traverse and a short pitch of 5.7 on poor quality rock that adds length and complexity to a descent. (Warning, beta alert) Had to kind of look around for a good place to start, this required walking around the right end and looking for some cracks to start up on. The start isn't particularly obvious. P1. Also started under a small roof very near the actual end of the buttress proper. There was a big, slab up and to the left of our start. Connected 3 short, discontinuous crack systems, mostly 5.7ish. This brings you to a big ledge with an obvious hand crack that goes straight up. Take this, at the top is a huge ledge with a right slanting crack. Belay here. ~100' P2. Climb steep right slanting crack to top, then you'll see an excellent looking off fingers crack to your right when you top out. Climb this to it's end, then traverse left (5.8) into another, wider, easier crack. (You could also take the easier looking, wider crack to the left of the off-fingers crack to avoid the 5.8 part). This leads to an easy, right-arching crack and after that, easy 5th/4th class until you run out of rope or find a nice spot to belay. Long pitch. P3. ~90' (or 130') of easy 5th/4th to the base of a large block. This block represents the "East summit". You can belay here or continue up. The block is maybe 35' tall, has many options, the easiest looking one towards the center was 5.7. |