Last Goodbye

Located on Block Ridge, which forms the left side (south edge) of Trundle Wall, Last Goodbye presents some good 5.8 climbing down low, with a mellow finish, in a great setting. Described by Hill (1993:191-192).

P1, ~160’: Aim for the beautiful dihedral that is visible 100’ ft up. From the first belay tree, head up and slightly right to the overhanging groove (yes, the one with all the rock lettuce/cabbage.) (To the left, there is a clean overhang that leads directly to the dihedral as well. I spent a long time trying to turn that roof, but I didn’t see a way to keep it in the 5.7-5.8 range. But it was chalked up, so someone’s been on it recently.) Above the overhanging 5.7 groove on the right, follow steep, slightly loose blocks to a fixed pin (an angle in a horizontal; the head of the pin is stamped “IIIX” or “XIII”, if that means anything to anyone). Then climb a fun thin face on a leftwardly ascending traverse into the excellent 40 ft’ 5.8 dihedral. (The direct corner from below meets up again here). At the top of the dihedral, the massive prow of the ridge looms above. Belay somewhere around here, planning for the next pitch to head up to the right.

 P2, 5.8, 130 ft: Climb to the top of the left-facing dihedral - pitch crux.  Then up easy slab and then a ~25 foot hand-sized crack to a belay ledge comfortable for two.  This ledge is at a keyhole view into the other side of Block Ridge.  Keyhole is human sized capped with a ~1' X ~3' rock.
 
 P3, easy 5th, 120 ft: Head up and right to then skirt the now horizontal ridge on its right, finally surmounting the ridge around 90 feet and then gaining a nice side-walk ledge with large belay boulder.  Great views.
 
 P4, exposed 4th class, ~120 ft: Continue to the namesake block at first skirting the ridge on its' S side.

P5, Ascend easy 5th class up the steep face behind the block, which will spit you out right at the rap anchors for the Trundle Wall routes.

On our approach, we aimed to leave the packs at the top of the route. To descend, maybe you could rap the Trundle Wall (but it sounds like it overhangs so much that you need to leave gear on the raps?). Instead we then opted to backtrack and walk down TWA Canyon. If one approaches by hiking down TWA Canyon, stay on skier's left side of the canyon where one can find a mostly good boot trail down to the point of traversing into the base of the climb. Down in the canyon, when nearing the base of Block Ridge, note the ledge about 200’ above the actual ridge toe. Traverse onto that ledge, and aim for a small fir tree just above the ledge. Getting to that tree involves some very exposed 4th class, so one may choose to belay slightly lower, or rope up to approach the tree.

We took 1-1/2 set of cams from C3's to a single #3 C4. Many small nuts were useful. One old fixed pin on P1.