River Of Darkness  5.8

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Type:  Trad, 1 pitch, 40 feet Consensus:  5.8 [details] FA:  D. Hare, Solo, 1981 Submitted By:  Tony B on Jan 9, 2002 You & This Route  |  Other Opinions (4) Your todo list: Your stars: Your rating: -none- [change] Your ticklist: [add new tick]

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Description 

Approach this climb on the West Ridge to the Cirque of the Cracks area. This is as for Handcrack, Duh Dihedral, and Terminal Velocity. On the right side or the Handcrack Buttress is the fun offwidth, Funeral March. Around the left corner from there (to the south) you can see a 40-foot climb with a section of off-width and dihedral. This "pitch" is more like 25' of climbing and 15' of scrambling.

This climb is fairly short, awkward to belay below, and has some loose rock. These are minor detractors, and only deduct a few "points" from this climb's value. Still, it's short and unfulfilling, so it didn't have many "points" to start with. For that reason, I have given it the bomb rating. It's not terrible, it's just not worth the bother unless you wanted to take 5 minutes out of your day to free-solo it, because that's about the amount of time it's worth.

To descend, walk to the Terminal Velocity anchor (trees) and rap off.

Protection 

There are a few pieces to be had along the way, but some are large. Take a few big cams to lead this, or plan on a bit of runout.