Flying A 5.10d
| 1,446 page views
Good page?   |
| Type: | Trad, TR, 1 pitch, 60 feet |
| Consensus: | 5.11a [details] |
| FA: | Len Margolin, 1971 |
| Submitted By: | George Perkins on Sep 12, 2007 |
| |
Red C3. Small gear on this route. Nuts protect it ...
Add Photo  Printer View
Description This White Rock mini classic may just send you flying.
Stem up a "phone booth" chimney and exit it using a reachy crimp to a good stance (1st crux) and a few feet of easy finger crack to a no-hands stem rest. Make a tricky step left and follow a beautiful thin finger crack using edges on the face to the left, or lieback off the right wall, with TCUs or nuts for pro in the thin finger crack. Committing to a thin section just after the corner changes to the left side is probably the psychological crux for the leader.
Flying A eats up small gear, but the stances to place it from are sometimes strenuous.
Location Start 10' right of Texas in a A-shaped chimney 8 feet high. This climb is the next crack right of the obvious Texas flake.
Protection Nuts & cams up to a #0.75 camalot, with doubles in the #0 TCU size.
George Perkins poised for action on Flyin' A.<...
|
Moving into the business of little fingers.
|
Busting through the crux on a fine late spring eve...
|
Past the crux but still got to pay attention.
| | |
By LeeAB
Administrator
From: ABQ, NM
Mar 1, 2009
rating: 5.11c
| The 5.10d grade of this thing is a joke...right?
It was harder than Unrelenting Nines. The two small fingered folks I was climbing with would also agree. |
By George Perkins
From: Los Alamos, NM
Mar 2, 2009
| I took the .10d grade from 'Jemez Rock' when I posted this climb, but I'll bump it up a notch since most of us think this is too hard for 5.10 too.
Flying A is much tougher than Blow Hole (10c/d). IMO, Nines is harder than this climb due mostly to the pump factor on "9s". I know a few people who climb a lot at White Rock who've redpointed Flying A, but haven't led Nines clean yet.
Some other sandbagged 5.10s that I try to avoid at the Playground:
"T2 Flake" ("5.10b")
Moment of Inertia ("5.10c")
Fingertip Lieback ("5.10d")
Edit 2/11: Now I see there are some other people who think it's 10d. I suppose I should change the 'official rating' back to that, since that's what's in the book. I don't know what I think it is, I've climbed it too much to fairly judge it. Seems easier than the 10c's that I climb less regularly. |
By Daniel Trugman
From: Los Alamos, NM / Stanford, CA
Jun 24, 2009
rating: 5.11a
| I agree that U9s is harder. However, U9s is a pretty obvious climb (just hard), whereas Flying A is more beta-intensive and takes slightly trickier gear. So I could see why a climber as strong as Lee might feel that Flying A is harder on the onsight. You still probably cruised both though... |
By LeeAB
Administrator
From: ABQ, NM
Jan 17, 2010
rating: 5.11c
| Nice to see that others agree that this is not 5.10+, no need to perpetuate a sandbag.
I did not cruise this, I was a jittering mess. Down-climbed from the opening boulder problem (V3?) at least once, maybe twice. Immitated Elvis the whole way up and was pumped out of my gourd when I finished. By comparison, U9 has good positive holds the whole way. |
|
RSS Feed
more...
Slideshow
