Lady Wilson's Cleavage 

The approach took us 3.5 hours, following Handren's description which was accurate.

The pitch ratings were a bit mysterious - to me the pitches mostly all felt like "old school 5.9", hard to say why Handren calls some of them 5.8. Lots of chimney technique, very little pure offwidth. For pitch 7, we climbed the face to the right of the short steep chimney (5.9) because the top was clogged with a tree. Pitch 8 might be fourth class if you go through the tree, but we face-climbed to the right of the tree for some more 5.8/5.9. We didn't find "easy scrambling" to the top; instead we climbed up past manzanita and then left along a ledge then up (low fifth) to gain the top. Seven hours on route.

We tried the Oak Creek Canyon descent, following advice from the Urioste's, who we ran into the previous day! The Urioste's said to go back almost to the limestone and head down a gully marked by a stand of large ponderosa pines, and to avoid heading down tempting earlier gullies. They said this was much faster than the First Creek Canyon descent. I think we failed to find the right gully - in the end we needed one double-rope rappel. Our descent was about four hours.

Great adventure, very fun climbing. The trees/bushes encountered along the route could be viewed as either detracting or adding interest as one figures out how to bypass them.

Highly Entertaining. Having not read Larry's book until after doing this, I too took the right-hand slab at the tree chimney. Seemed fine. 1 marginal stopper for pro. Also, was too tired to look too far for "easy scrambling", so just did the last short chimney to the top. By that time in the day, it felt 5.5ish. Descended First Creek, which is easy but long. Classic route. I thought the flora kind of added to the adventure aspect. Nothing like a good Cascades Belay to vary the muscle groups used...

A great line up a great chunk of rock, too bad the climbing isn't up to par. A few notes:

The approach is pretty reasonable. We didn't have a watch, but I'm guessing 2.5 hours or so. Stay on the rock to the left of the left-slanting gully. When you get to the top of the left-slanting gully, go up the gully straight in front of you for 10' and start traversing right. This will avoid using the fixed rope and you won't encounter anything harder than 3rd class.

The route to me was a let down. Lots of dirt, brush, and suspect rock. We didn't have anything break, but be careful. At the top of the last chimney, we scrambled off to the left. It was maybe 5.4, but you probably want a rope due to exposure and rock quality.

Have ice cold beer waiting at the car, because you're going to feel worked after this. At least we didn't need to use the headlamps at all.

In March of 2012 we didn't find any fixed ropes on the approach. Instead, we found tons and tons of scrub oak. I've done a lot of adventure routes in Red Rock, but I have to say that this is the brushiest of the semi-popular adventure routes that I've encountered. I definitely came out of the experience with some holes in my sweatshirt and pants... It took about three hours from the car to the base of the route.

Be sure to go light on carry-over equipment. It's really hard to wear backpacks in the chimneys and offwidths on this route. And they're long enough that it's a pain in the butt to have them hung between your legs pitch after pitch...

Jason