This route will either freak you out, or make you you wish you were soling. Two of the pitches offer no protection between the belays, and the others don't offer much more. ON the plus side, you cover some beautiful, pure and mostly un-spoiled granite.
the first pitch starts off straight-forwardly enough, a short slab gains a brushy ledge with a left facing crack on its right-hand side. You can climb the crack or stick to the highly featured face for about 100ft, but then the crack peters out and the slab gets slabbier. Put in your last bit of protection where the crack peters out. You will notice that on either side of you are faint rusty-brownish water streaks. The two-bolt anchor you want is about 40 ft up towards the left-hand water streak. 140 ft 5.7 R.
P2: Prepare yourself for careful climbing, and proceed 140 ft straight up to the next bolted anchor. 5.5 X.
P3: Another 140 ft of mostly un-protected 5.5 slab climbing, veering off to the left, gains a belay beneath a large headwall. A variation veers to the right and directly towards a tree and ledge right underneath the large headwall above. From this tree you then join up with the pitch 5 of Misty. 5.5R
P4: Follow the base of the headwall until a weakness allows you to gain its top. 5.7.
P5-6: A low-angled slab covered with round gray protrusions ascends for 250ft to the tree-line. Very little protection is found on this slab, but the climbing stays at 5.5.
Location
This route is on the left side of the massively blank slab to the south of the Great Arch. The start is identified by a few brushy ledges to the left of a left-facing crack/corner. A useful hint is to scramble up the slope to the south and reach a high-point from which you can just make out the tattered slings on the first anchor. This helps point you in the right direction at least.
Protection
Faith in your climbing ability.
The first two bolted belays have two old bolts each, and one newer 3/8" bolt.
The route is left and up from Misty. Edmund Ward and I put in this route in about 1976-77. As I recall, we traded leads and each of us had an old Rawl bolt kit. This way each of us put in a bolt at the anchor at different times. The variation to the right, 5.10-?, was first led by Mike Head and followed by me. It goes up the steep headwall to the right of the belay at the top of the second pitch and is more easily done with a heel hook. Aaron, you are correct about the lack of protection but I believe R is more appropriate than X.
RSS Feed
Slideshow
