Milk Run  5.10d A0

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Type:  Trad, Aid, 4 pitches, 400 feet, Grade II Consensus:  5.11 A0 [details] FA:  P. Croft, T. Knight, 1982 Submitted By:  Peter Spindloe on Sep 16, 2009 You & This Route  |  Other Opinions (9) Your todo list: Your stars: Your rating: -none- [change] Your ticklist: [add new tick]

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Description 

Yet another Peter Croft and Tammy Knight tour-de-force. A devious couple of pitches take you to a spectacular corner system

P1. Climb the obvious path through the moss and bushes past some surprisingly tricky and committing moves until you emerge from the vegetation and the wall sweeps out to your left (5.7). You could belay here, but there's no reason not to carry on to the station for Rock Loggers rather than belaying from the forest. There are two choices for getting there. You can head straight up to the first bolt on Tantalus Wall and then aid left to a groove and downclimb the groove to the station. This presents difficulties for protecting the second on the traverse and the downclimb as the groove is overgrown and slick when wet. The other option is to immediately traverse straight out left on some bolts. This was wet so we opted for the groove, which was also wet and unpleasant.

P2. Head up the obvious left facing crack until it arches around to become an undercling. It apparently goes free at 11d, but is called 10c if you use the second and third bolt for aid. After the bolts it continues to head left and the holds appear to die out just before you reach the corner. The trick here is to downclimb about ten feet, then go left into the corner and back up to the station. (5.11d or 5.10c A0)

P3. This beautiful left facing corner has great locks, takes great pro and is one of the most sustained pitches of its grade around. (5.10b).

P4. The spectacular corner continues and is long and steep. (5.10d).

You can rappel here (double ropes), continue up Midnight Run, or take a 5.8 pitch to join up with pitch 5 of Tantalus Wall. You can also connect up with the start of Cerberus.

Location 

Starts as for Tantalus wall. Essentially, walk right along the base of the Chief from Freeway, past a nice open area beside a slab with two prominent bolted dykes until the trail heads uphill and into a bit more vegetation. A cleared path up the wall is obvious.

Protection 

Doubles of cams from finger to hand. Triples of the finger sizes (.3 through .75 Camalots) are great. Some micro cams (green C3 in our case) are key for P2. The corners take great nuts, but they're so sustained that plugging cams is much more convenient.