Great Expectations 

The second pitch of this was my first lead climb ever, done after climbing Dihedral as a second. The Great Expectations route was my second lead. The crack quickly gobbled up nearly a full rack of cams. Only placed one stopper, but probably could have placed more.

The crux is moving over the lip and traversing over to the anchors. I ended up protecting up high then down climbing a bit before traversing over. This was a great climb, I felt pretty comfortable the entire time, but it did get my heart pumping a bit.

Cams .5-3 and one small Alien as my mental piece for the traverse.

This route eats the big cams up to #4, mostly #1-#4. Don't forget to knot the ends of your rope on rappel! With a 60M you'll be about ten feet above the belay station and about twenty above the tree but the down climb is safe, just don't rap off the ends

Climbed this on a 50m rope and just barely had enough to reach the P1 belay station. The rap off P1 is about 150 ft, so two 50's are fine. If you rap off P2, don't even consider trying to reach the middle belay station on the Water Streak wall with a single 60m - you'll come up about 10 ft short.

I lead this in approach shoes. Great gear, but you really don't need it on this bomber crack.

Great Expectation was my second trad lead after Tree Route. Watch out for loose rock/gravel up to 6" diameter at P1 belay station on Great Expectations. P2 was an easy climb but a lot of fun traversing along the head wall. We rapped down from the top of Water Streak with a 60m and 70m rope that got us down to the ramp at the beginning of Great Expectations.

Climbing second pitch of Great Expectations. Submitted By: Tom Harris on Nov 26, 2010

Rap from anchors atop Water Streak. We used a 60m and 70m rope and reached the ramp at the base of Great Expectations Submitted By: Tom Harris on Nov 26, 2010

Climbed to the anchors on a 60m rope with about 15ft of rope left. Rappelled 25m down to a bomber slung block. Pulled the rope and rappelled to the tree at the bottom.

My favorite way to climb this route is to traverse under the roof to the second set of bolts. Then go left clipping the bolt and around the corner as the "Select" book says. But instead of ending the route by rappelling/walking off to the left pull up onto the slab to the right and angle up and right to a vertical crack across the upper face. It is moderate 5.5 with sparse pro but a bomber thread and a big horizontal crack. It is about a 45m pitch from the bolts with a good bit of rope drag. You can easily put in a couple of cams and belay from the crack. From there you can continue with a fourth short pitch straight up the crack to the summit with sensational view. From there you can walk down the big crack / ramp to the bolts at the top of the tree route. That gives you a very moderate, very fun 3 1/2 pitch climb with a fun summit experience.

Great route. Solid rock, perfect hand jams, very sticky feet on the face or in the crack. Wish it was a bit steeper for a little more challenge. You could put in three full sets of cams if you wanted to. I think I placed four. A bit of a pain to set a toprope up on, I recommend slinging out the anchors long (20 feet+), placing a directional, and maybe even a pulley to reduce rope drag.

Once led, you can easily toprope the next dihedral right (about the same grade, slightly worse protection) and the next, next dihedral to the right (again, about the same grade, but you have to get pretty deep into the chimney to protect it.) Don't worry, you don't have to chimney in there. You can easily face climb.

We took 11 kids, ages 2 to 10 to this route. Half of them made it to the top, the other half made it about halfway.

Didn't realize from the guidebook that there was another pitch. But it didn't seem like I was missing too much.

I saw Craig's post about doing this in approach shoes and tried that - it made the lead feel harder than 5.6. Definitely take rock shoes.

From the belay ledge, we walked down the block, then pulled right onto the Nike slab and ranout the easy slab, clipped the Nike anchor, then continued on up to the "Sundeck" up top. Built a natural anchor to bring up followers. From there, you can unrope and enjoy the view. Descend by rapping on Tree Route