Eyeballing the top-out jugs while moving through t...
Description
One of the finer routes at The Overlook. A nicely pocketed, sustained face route. It is a very popular top-rope and a proud gear lead because of the tricky gear placements in pockets. By longtime, documented agreement by local climbers do not bolt this face route. The route gets its name from a Cholla cactus that used to be at the base of the route that pricked many climbers that came off the rock at the start. The cholla disappeared a few years ago.
Location
The sweet, pocketed face with no bolts! Accessed by the easy scrambling on top of the Lower Buttress
Protection
Small to medium cams (up to #1 camalot) and tri-cams for the pockets. Chain anchor at top.
An Omega Pacific red link cam is a great cam for this route and its flaring pockets. It protects the final, crux 6 feet very well compared to the lower cam placements that don't feel super solid. (Of course, if you have tri-cams, those are probably better. I don't have any.)
This would be one of the best sport routes in New Mexico if it were bolted like the line to its right and left. Say, what happened to the cholla anyway?
Sadly, the Cholla met it's demise a few years ago but I don't know how. For a few years before it disappeared, it looked more anemic each time I saw it. My guess is someone got pricked by it one last time, got angry and got rid of it.
As for the notion that it be bolted, that's certainly been mentioned and debated for years . For a long while, I thought it would be nice with bolts for pro but believe it would be "just another 5.10 face sport route" and really not super impressive. I've led it twice on gear and it protects well enough and sure makes for an exciting and proud 5.10 face route with gear for pro.
By George Perkins Administrator From: Los Alamos, NM Dec 12, 2008 rating: 5.10b PG13
Not to be a sandbagger, because it's much harder to hang on to place gear in an onsight style.. but enough of the pockets will take bomber gear if you suss out the placements first on TR or rappel to see what fits where (many of the pockets open up inside so it can be hard to tell which cam is the right size at first glance). Once you have the pro figured out (or pre-placed), Cholla Wall can feel like a pretty reasonable lead, not too scary, and one you'll want to repeat next time you're at the Overlook.
Tri-cams are supposed to be really useful on this climb. We didn't have any of those, and we found 6 placements (#0.5 cam, #.75 cam, #1 cam, large HB brassie offset nut, #1-cam-actually-red-link-cam, #0.5 cam; all cams in horizontal pockets) that protected the climb pretty well.
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