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!
BETA PHOTO: Gazing up the first two pitches
Description
Easy route-finding make this route an obvious choice for a first trip to ORP. The route is easily identified as the major corner system that rises for about 2 pitches up the North West side of ORP.
Start: from the Canyon between ORP and Lesser Spire, scramble up an short slab directly beneath the corner system to reach a large bushy ledge.
Pitch 1: Starts with some moderate climbing in the steep vegetated corner up to a crux in an off-width, flaring chimney corner. This crux may feel hard for the grade, but good body scumming technique and a large cam will see you through it. After this crux, continue up the vegetated corner system to a nice belay stance.
Pitch 2: The vegetation finally gives way to cleaner rock. A second crux is pulling around a steep headwall. There are two options for this, a steep fist-OW crack on the left or making a delicate face move to the right to gain big holds through the headwall. Both ways protect well, with medium-large cams. A short ways further is a third crux, a perfect 20 ft finger crack that eats up wired stoppers and tops out at a two-bolt anchor. Two more pitches of moderate climbing/route-finding meander through blocky terrain to the top.
Location
The start is roughly across from Cacahuate in the canyon between ORP and Lesser Spire. The entire route can be rappelled in 4 two-rope rappels and there are a few old-sling rappel stations that are found while climbing the route. The bolted anchors are roughly 70m off the deck, so if you have two 70's you could potentially get down from there in a single rappel.
Protection
A few big pieces are good to have for this route. Otherwise, a standard rack does the trick. By no means do you need a lot of big pro, we only had one #3 and 2 #2 Camelots and the route felt only a little edgy. One more bigger piece would give added security.
The bolts at the top of P2 are both 3/8" and although one is fairly rusty, the other looks newer and solid. There is also an old home-made aluminum hanger and button head 6 ft to the left of these which I mention out of interest because it isn't going to hold a much. Gear anchors for all other belays.
ORP
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