Unimpeachable Groping 

Climbed this great route 5/03/04. If you want to rap the route stop at the belay at the the top of P6. If you want to finish continue past this anchor about 40 feet to a large flat ledge with two bolts. And shade. P7 is 130 feet of solid 5.8 climbing and takes you to the top of Ginger Buttress (single bolt). From there we descended as for Ginger Cracks, one rap to the horseshoe basin above Power Failure and three down that route. We brought TCUs and a set of nuts and placed a total of three pieces. I think if I do it again I will take the orange Metolius TCU and 14 draws. There are a couple of homemade hangers on the wall above the top but it looks pretty serious up there. We felt this climb as good or better than Prince of Darkness in a much more dramatic setting.

I am going to Red Rocks to climb this route. On what pitch did you use the "orange metolius TCU"? did you need a buttbag for any of the belays or were there good stances at the belay stations? did you need two ropes to rappel or was one 60 meter enough? Thanx

For pictures, trip report and other beta about this route, check out our web site: http://www.ericandlucie.com/Website2003/Red%20Rocks/Unimpeac>>>>>

Climbed 11/27/04. Fantastic route - one of the best in the well-protected, multipitch sportclimb variety. The roof pitch (P4 in Phil's description) is not to be missed!! We brought a full set of nuts and single set of cams to 2" and felt we had way too much (placed a total of 3 or 4 pieces in 6 pitches without having to run it out). Next time I would bring a few nuts and possibly 2 or 3 TCUs, plus draws. Climbing with double ropes allows for an easy descent (3 or 4 raps) from the top of pitch 6. I think the following pitch lengths are a little closer:

P1: 120'
P2: 120'
P3: 25' (better to combine w/P2)
P4: 100'
P5: 90'
P6: 80'

There is a nice photo of the route with the line drawn in at Eric and Lucie's website.

Hey i tried this route and had to back out cause of the heat....I am going to be in Vegas from december 11 to January 4th. I live and work in boulder and would be willing to put anyone up this spring/fall/summer if they could find it in their hearts to let me stay with them for any or all of these dates. Plus I could housesit(great with any and all animals and plants) and I have references...if you have friends relatives with such needs.If nothing else, if anyone is interested in climbing this route during the christmas break drop me an email.b.p. email:aquaman55@hotmail.com

great route. absolutely great protection. generally, bolts every body length, sometimes less. there are two 'runouts' on the route, but both are on easier climbing, and take decent trad gear. a small selection of nuts and a couple thin to finger-size TCUs, as suggested, will sew the route up.

i dont really think the route is as hard as the beta would suggest. the roof pitch, IMO, is definitely not 5.10+. the second pitch was the hardest for me, technically, and a couple of very steep upper pitches might be the crux for someone with forearms unused to vertical-ish face.

Delicate moves on delicate rock.

One more bolt on the first pitch would be nice, to encourage people to leave the tree alone. The pitch would still go at about 5.10.

There are a couple of points where 24-36" runners alleviate rope drag.

I thought the final pitch was 5.8 when a partner & I did it as the final pitch of Ginger Cracks, last year.

I found this route to be anything but classic. With all due respect to the opinions of others, this route is generic, and avoids at least one natural line immediately left of the start.

The crux roof pitch is 9+ at best in my book.

Sorry to be the voice of dissent, but I found none of the qualities I enjoy about RR or long/medium-length routes present on this one.

I can see why it is so popular with all the bolts and zero commitment.

This route will change greatly over the next decade as all the hollow holds get washed away and pulled off...which is most of the holds on the first two pitches.

Good route. I found it to be better than Prince of Darkness. Not sure if I would give it a 10D or 10+ rating like the guide books, however, fun and sustained face climbing for six pitches.

Gear: 15 draws, 1-2 TCUs in the finger-size range. As a side note, we did the route without placing a single piece of gear and never felt run out.

There is a nice ledge at the top of pitch three with a great view.

Easy rap with 2 ropes.

I recently climbed this route, and wanted to add a few points for others to follow:

There are multiple rap anchors on this route at various lengths. On two occasions this led my partner to stop short of the "true anchors."

1) One spot was on pitch 2 where there are two bolts placed vertically less that 2 ft. apart, but if you continue up about 15 more feet you'll see the rap rings.
2) There was another spot on the 4th pitch where you encounter a set of rap rings well before the higher anchor. Presumably these where you rap to if you don't complete the 7th pitch (this is what we did and they were almost right at 60m).

ALSO be sure to knot the ends of your ropes when you rap. From the rap rings shortly above the 4th roof pitch, gravity takes you left of the bolt line. IF you continue past the pitch 2 belay station to the pitch one belay station it will require you to stretch your rope. I weigh 185lbs. and I had to reach out with a runner to clip the anchors below me to make it. Fortunately, I'd knotted my rope ends as they were tight against my belay device. BE CAREFUL! The benefit of this is that we got down in 3 rappels...

This is a fun route (much more enjoyable than POD), and it didn't seem too loose. I would recommend linking pitches 2 and 3, and only bring 20 draws. IMO if you are at all comfortable at this grade you won't feel the need to place any gear. There was only one spot towards the start of pitch 2 that was even remotely runout... but it was easy.

One more thing... when approaching this route you need to keep your eyes peeled for the tree at the start. We passed it on our approach as there is another LARGER pine tree about 100 yards up the gully towards the waterstreak (Power Failure) and you crawl under some shrubbery as you're passing the start of the climb. The start of U.G. truly does climb a tree, that is an arm's length from the wall. It seems like a simple mistake, but it cost us about 30 minutes scouring the wall looking for bolts about 100 yards uphill from where we should have been... DOH!

The moves on this route are more interesting and varied than those of POD but the rock is quite a bit more suspect. If not for the overabundance of bolts I would applaud the route more. Overall this route provides a nice jaunt up several nice pitches. I would have to say I agree that the overall rating would be a bit more like .10c but who knows what will be broken the next time someone does it.

I would recommend taking no gear and linking the 2nd and 3rd pitches as stated by others. We also linked the 5th and 6th pitches easily.

Overall, I agree with Brent Armstrong's comments - particularly about the rock quality, which I think remains somewhat poor throughout the climb. Pretty much every other hold you grab is hollow, and the cruxes seem to come from avoiding certain holds or pulling on them in less-than-ideal ways so as not to rip them off. I did enjoy the exposure and location on this one, but the climbing is a bit generic.

Linking P2 and P3 is the way to go, however be aware that at present one of the hangers is missing from one of the bolts from the belay on the ledge(below roof). The bolt itself is still sticking out of the rock - bring a stopper.

On the roof pitch, skip the first set of anchors - there is another belay just above.

I found this climb to be quite enjoyable, with lots of fun face climbing. However, I agree with some of the other posters that there is a fair bit of not-well-attached rock on the climb. (I broke off a hold, and I'm not super large.)

In my opinion the climb is no harder than 10a.

We took some gear on the climb and used none of it: I would suggest climbing with 12 quickdraws & anchor material if you are comfortable with the occasional runout on 7-8 moves. The 9-10a moves are well protected with lots of bolts.

We chose to do the Ginger cracks descent down and left from the summit block as Drederek described - this requires fewer rappels on a cleaner face, which we thought would lessen the chance of getting the ropes stuck while rappeling. This worked well.

Hey guys,
Sounds like a really sweet route and am actually planning on climbing it this December. A recent poster said that one of the hangers is missing from one of the bolts on the ledge. Does anyone know if it has been replaced? Also, has anyone made the descent with a single 70m rope. Thanks!

The Cat and I climbed this route today, April 12, 2008. We had a great time. The rock quality wasn't as horrible as we were anticipating and the weather was perfect. It's too bad the initial poster for this used Roxanne's guidebook as a reference because the description is poor. Here is what we found:

Pitch 1: Chimney tree and wall to first bolt. I guess the idea is to sling some branches on the way up. :-) After 120' there is a bolted station at a stance just above two very close bolts. Although I didn't take gear on this pitch, an orange Metolius TCU would have been nice. 120 feet, 5.10a.

Pitch 2: Follow bolts, passing one belay station to a HUGE ledge below a roof. No gear needed. 160 feet, 5.10a.

Pitch 3: Climb out the roof on big jugs and continue to the next anchor. I did use a red Metolius TCU on this pitch. 120 feet, 5.10a.

Pitch 4: Follow 12 bolts to an anchor. No gear needed. 80 feet, 5.10a.

Pitch 5: Follow 6 more bolts to an anchor, but pass this and continue to another HUGE ledge with two bolts and rap slings. The first half of this pitch is 5.10a, but then it backs way off. The second half climbing is easy (5.8 then 5.6 and easier), but you might want gear since the bolts end at that first anchor. Not exactly sure of the length, but it was definitely more than 80' as stated in the guidebooks. It felt more like 110' or 120'.

Pitch 6: This looks like a lichen covered mess but turns out to be very fun climbing on bomber rock to the top of the pillar (amazing view) following lot's more bolts. You may be able to find some gear at one slightly runout place, but the climbing is easy and the rock is bullet proof compared with the rest of the climb so you probably won't think twice about any small runout. 160', 5.8.

From the top, make a tiny (8') rap west from 2 widely spaced bolts with slings, to the next ledge where you'll see slings around a wedged block (Ginger Cracks descent). From here make another rap (we used a single 70 meter) into the bowl. Scramble down to the lip of the bowl where you'll find rappel bolts to rappel Power Failure with two ropes (3 raps or we did two since one of our ropes was a 70 meter. This descent is fast and ropes are not prone to catch on the face.

Another note: If you are going to combine pitches 4 and 5 of this description, you'll need 24 quickdraws! 20 for protection and 2 at each belay. Plan accordingly. On the day we did this climb, there were no missing hangers at any belay.

We are both tall and felt no move was harder than 5.10a although if you combine those upper pitches you'll have the weight of 2 full ropes dragging you down and this might make things feel harder than they are. We had a great time.

This route is a fucken pile.

The climbing is enjoyable enough, but the hardware could use some work. Spinners, extra belays, and a missing hanger/nut on a stud you could remove by hand at the belay below the roof. Brock topo lengths are way off, as usual. P3 is confusing when you reach two closely spaced bolts (a foot apart) near the end of the pitch which are not the belay that is actually 10' or so higher and just out of sight over a bulge.

We placed maybe two pieces of gear, and one of those was for the first move out of the tree about 2' below the first bolt. Next time I'd just take a single finger sized cam and draws. While you can rap the route with two ropes (we did) the first pull is jacked, probably better to use the Ginger Cracks descent. Crux? Who knows, my partner and I both thought it was different spots, neither of which were the supposed cruxes. Very soft for 10d, even for Red Rock.

My girlfriend and I were in Red Rocks a few weeks ago. I was up Unimpeachable a few years ago (with two 60m ropes for the descent). We only had one 70m with us this time, and saw in the guide book that two 60s would be required. But based on the ~120ft pitch lengths and the few intermediate anchors I remembered since last time, we figured we'd try it anyway. In case we'd run short on rope on any pitch, we were planning to downclimb that pitch and go home.
It turns out already the first pitch went ~15ft beyond the middle marker of our 70m. With rope stretch, and a rappel taking the direct route down, the rope was enough to get down from the first set of anchors though without resorting to any acrobatics :-).
I wanted to post this info here as an answer to the question above about one 70m being enough for the route. I don't know for sure if that'll work with pitch #2 or later. But if you intend to give it a try, I would recommend ensuring your leader is comfortable downclimbing if that would turn out to be necessary.