Therneau brothers on Poseidon Adventure. Joel at t...
Description
Hats off to Dave Pagel and Rick Kollath for this one. Awesome, sustained, and technical. Finger locks and laybacks in and around a thin crack. The crux is roughly 30 feet above the belay ledge but it doesn't get much easier all the way to the top. The last 10 feet are little run out but can be protected with a bomber nut placement. Farris's guidebook mentions first pitch, which is a short crack leading to the belay ledge. Not sure how to do it without getting soaked.
Location
Very end of the Northern Ramparts. The corner with Poseidon Adventure is perhaps best visible from the clifftop at Mr. Lean/Mack the Knife (see beta photo) Walk along the cliff to the uphill section with no vegetation and lots of pebbles. Caution when locating the route looking down from the edge.
Protection
Small to medium nuts and cams. Belay at the ledge down low takes medium cams. Anchor up top requires long slings wrapped around several smaller trees.
If you're top-roping. I suggest doing it from the bottom (grab a drink of ice cold taconite water while you're down there). You add another 30 ft of 10+ finger climbing, and I would argue that it ups the grade to 12a.
I did some of my first climbs at P head in the late 70's. A number of years later Dave Pagel gave me the tour of Palisade's new routes. We just TR climbed them but this one stands out as one of the best. It deserves the four stars and should not be missed.
micro to small nuts for most of route. .75 and #2 BD; blue and purple TCU. long webbing for top anchor. anchor at the start of the climb takes small cams (.75 BD; red metolius; etc) and/or small nuts. for a anchor piece you can also use a couple 48" runners to clip the bolt on echoes that is up and to the left of the belay.
Palisade Head
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