Mescalito  5.9+ A3

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Type:  Trad, Aid, 26 pitches, 2800 feet, Grade VI Consensus:  5.9+ A3 [details] FA:  Steve Sutton, Charlie Porter, Hugh Burton & Chris Nelson, 1973 Submitted By:  Jeff G. on Jul 21, 2007 You & This Route  |  Other Opinions (15) Your todo list: Your stars: Your rating: -none- [change] Your ticklist: [add new tick]

cleaning pitch 23

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Fifi Buttress To Close! MORE INFO >>> The following areas are closed to all visitor use to protect peregrine falcon aeries from March 1 until August 1 of each year or until the young falcons of the current year have fledged: Fifi Buttress Immediately west of Leaning Tower. Closure includes all routes on Fifi Buttress. This information is a public crowdsourcing effort between the Access Fund, and Mountain Project. You should confirm closures, restrictions, and/or related dates. Keeping climbing areas open and conserving the climbing environment

Description 

Hard to describe a 26 pitch route. You'll obviously want a topo but here is some basic info to get you started. Amazing route - one of the major highlights of my climbing career and one of the best experiences of my life. I highly recommend this line for a big El-Cap route without undue difficulty. You need to pay some dues on easier and smaller routes but you don't need to be an aid master or put your head on the chopping block for this one. I put a free rating of 9+ because you will do much better freeing a couple of the awkward chimney pitches instead of trying to aid them. The chimney on pitch 19 was especially awkward to aid, I had much better luck with freeing it. Lots of amazing pitches. No stand out crux but alot of spicy A/C2-3 pitches. The bismark is pretty exiting at the top, be ready to belly flop! Make sure you plan a bivy for the Bismark ledge, unbeleavable views of Halfdome and the Valley. Be efficient on cleaning lower outs and traverses, no big pedulums but some devious pitches to clean - especially the seagull and the molar traverse. Get good at highstepping it really helped me with the rivot ladders and getting past some spicier terrain.

Location 

EL CAPITAN. Right of the Nose, Left of POW

Protection 

All belays are bomber! We placed a total of 4 pins but didn't have any cam hooks. I think you could do this clean with a few cam hooks and a little trickery. Lots of aluminum dowels. Several fixed head pitches as well. Be prepared to replace heads or blown dowels/rivots. Some dowels have allready been replaced with quarter inch bolts. We had a double set of HB offsets that were incredibly usefull. We had one hybrid alien (green/yellow) and used it on every pitch. A full set of hybrids up to yellow/orange may be nice. We had a #6 friend for the top of the bismark and it worked out pretty well. Several hooking sections - we had a basic selection of 3-4 hooks. 3-4 sets of the smaller cams up to #1 camelot and doubles in the bigger sizes to #3.5 camelot. Single #6 friend. For pins we used a few short LA's and some baby angles. Bring a few bigger angles and a few sawed off angles as well. Also bring a selection of heads and keyhole hangars.

Photos of Mescalito Slideshow

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Pitch 7	Soloist on Mescalito	The Molar back in pin pounding days
FA Mescalito 1973, Charlie Porter, Hugh Burton & S...	FA Mescalito 1973, passing Hugh above the Seagull.	FA Mescalito 1973, Steve Sutton on top of the Bism...
FA Mescalito 1973, Charlie Porter leading off the ...	The Molar Traverse	FA Mescalito 1973, Charlie jumaring.
FA Mescalito 1973, Charlie Porter leading the last...	Climbing in the fog	High on Mescalito
Perfect conditions half way up Mescalito