Welcome to the New Mexico section of Mountain Project!
The contributions that are made to this site are greatly appreciated; this site is made up of an awesome community of users that make the site what it is.
Although there is very little information regarding “rules” for submitting climbing areas and routes to this site, the New Mexico Administers all agree that the following guidelines may be helpful to truly make this site go “Beyond the Guidebook”.
1) Don’t be a jerk (this one states the obvious). 2) Route and area submissions should truly be helpful to those out climbing. Before posting, you should have some first hand experience actually climbing the route. This always results in a much more useful description. 3) Please, please, please… Don’t copy route descriptions directly out of guidebooks, online publications, etc. This is plagiarism! Remember, BEYOND the guidebook! 4) Please use the spell check and make an effort to use correct grammar.
Again, the Mountainproject community truly appreciates the efforts taken to make good route descriptions. If you feel that a route or area description is not up to standard, a brief email to one of the area admins for suggestions on improvement will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for taking the time to make the New Mexico section of Mountain Project quality! We look forward to seeing you out there!
Description
Starts near the center of the crag, climbing over a series of roofs. This route shares with another route, which also goes at 5.12a. Move left at the intersection between the two climbs. This climb also has an alternate start to the left of the original, which actually goes up another route, Evolution (see comment below from Aaron Miller, the route setter). The crux is going over the second roof, watch the pinch on the arete! The top has some interesting face climbing and stemming to the anchors, though, a little run-out for my tastes at the top. Good route, however!
Location
The route is in the center between the right and left sides of the Solar Cave crag. Two routes share the same start here.
The start to the left is for a new route called "Evolution", which is rated 12c overall. However, this start is solid 12b through the bulge and 11+ through the huge roof flake where you can veer right and finish on "Lucy". This will allow one to "wuss out" of the spectacular but very hard 12c (thin and powerful) face finish of Evolution (very generously bolted).
After you pull Lucy's 12a crux, 60 feet off the ground, the 5.11- upper dihedral section is runout 5.7 for about 15 feet. However, the route quickly regains an appropriate density of bolts when the climbing gets harder than 5.7.
There is also a third, but less obvious variation to the same start as Lucy and Cro-Magnon. After the first bulge-crux where you cop a stem-rest under the roof, head up right past the next bolt and then traverse hard right(5.9) under the roof. This will get you on the sweet upper 11d face section of Neanderthal ( this variation properly titled "Meanderthal"). Back clean the draw at the stem-rest and use two long runners for the easy traverse.
Solar Cave
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