By Tony B From: Around Boulder, CO May 21, 2005 rating: 5.11a
| This must be the hardest 10 at the cliff. Perhaps one of the easier 11's? Moving right under the roof is difficult and getting to the jug is a pretty stiff move for 5.10. Or maybe I was totally missing something, but I did it twice and it was hard both times despite trying to find another way. Maybe I did not find the crux head-jam. The bolt protecting the tricky mantle above the roof is pretty crap. An old [Star-Dryven] with a rusty [Leeper]. The route runs out above the bolt too, so this requires some either element of faith, confidence, or stupidity to get far above. It should be replaced someday and is probably not good to push your grade on. I could write a small [article] called "how to epic" on 5.10 regarding this route. '...It all started by placing my red camalot down low, just for the heck of it. I didn't want or need gear, but the placement was [begging] to be had, so I placed it. [Then] I got up under [the] roof, where the red would have been perfect. I tried the green- pretty crappy, so [I] shoved the yellow in. [This] resulted in an over-stuffed crack with a solid placement, although tricky and with one lobe of the camming unit in a crux finger edge... Now I'd placed the red and yellow. Climbing the roof I came out and up above the crap bolt a ways and out left to what would have been a good yellow camalot placement., but I'd placed the yellow where [the] red should have been. So I shoved in a blue in a flare and traversed left out a bit and up to the belay, which would have been perfectly set on a Blue Camalot, but alas... It all started with a red camalot. |