BETA PHOTO: Looking up at Vector. The first pitch ends roughl...
Description
This climb parallels St. Vitus Dance, finishing on its third pitch.
The first first pitch is one of the best pitches on the Apron -- a full 50m of hands, fists and about 10 feet of offwidth. The second pitch joins St. Vitus third pitch partway up.
Location
From the little patch of forest that is usually considered the start of St. Vitus dance, walk about 15 feet to the right and you'll find yourself looking up at a beautiful hand-crack. Climb it.
Protection
It's possible to do this climb with a "standard" rack with no doubles, as long as you have one bigger piece (#4 camalot). This requires a fair bit of back cleaning, sliding pieces up, and running it out a bit, but the jams are so good that it feels very comfortable. The offwidth section barely takes a #4 camalot; it's badly tipped out at a few points as you slide it up. Adding a #4.5 camalot, and doubles in the .75, #1, #2 and #3 sizes would allow you to sew it up. Thanks to variations in parallel cracks and the way it pinches down in the back, you can often leave behind a nut and save a cam. After 50m you get to a nice ledge with one bolt which can be backed up with a variety of cams (much trickier with nuts).
The second pitch is much shorter, easier, and takes a few hand-sized pieces.
Reccomended finish, from the top of the long jamcrack that ends at a ledge with a single belay bolt as described above. Step right to a ramp in a right facing corner that steepens with a shallow flaring hand crack. Carefull with pro as it flares quite a bit near the top(crux,"Squamish Select" says 10.c, i thought it was more like 10.a). At the top of the corner, continue straight up joining the final pitch on st. vitus's dance at the bulging handcrack "roofs". Did this in july of 07 and thought it was spectacular. More challenging and cleaner than the original route
By Peter Spindloe Administrator From: North Vancouver, BC Oct 30, 2007
The alternate finish suggested above definitely looks good. We debated it, but were on a very tight timeline so we stuck with the original route. I'll definitely want to do P1 again, so I'll give this a try next time.
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