BETA PHOTO: The approach route for Lady Wilson's Cleavage is s...
Description
This a long, serious route, following mostly wide cracks. It is not actually on the Horseshoe Wall, but that's close enough for now...
Routefinding is easy on this one, once you find your way to the base. Check the accompanying photo from Red Rock Odyssey to find the line for the approach.
From the rope-up spot, climb six pitches up the obvious crack. Then go right in the gully and chimney system to the top. The most obvious descent is through First Creek.
The approach took us 3.5 hours, following Handren's description which was accurate.
The pitch ratings were a bit mysterious - to me the pitches mostly all felt like "old school 5.9", hard to say why Handren calls some of them 5.8. Lots of chimney technique, very little pure offwidth. For pitch 7, we climbed the face to the right of the short steep chimney (5.9) because the top was clogged with a tree. Pitch 8 might be fourth class if you go through the tree, but we face-climbed to the right of the tree for some more 5.8/5.9. We didn't find "easy scrambling" to the top; instead we climbed up past manzanita and then left along a ledge then up (low fifth) to gain the top. Seven hours on route.
We tried the Oak Creek Canyon descent, following advice from the Urioste's, who we ran into the previous day! The Urioste's said to go back almost to the limestone and head down a gully marked by a stand of large ponderosa pines, and to avoid heading down tempting earlier gullies. They said this was much faster than the First Creek Canyon descent. I think we failed to find the right gully - in the end we needed one double-rope rappel. Our descent was about four hours.
Great adventure, very fun climbing. The trees/bushes encountered along the route could be viewed as either detracting or adding interest as one figures out how to bypass them.