The Choss Monkey on Baba Cool. Belayed by John Wac...
Description
Located on the Chopping Block. Hike up from the small parking area just as your leaving the Rushmore memorial. Follow obvious trail. Wrinkled Rock is on your right and the Chopping block is on your left. as the trail curves around the Chopping Block, scramble up to base of the routes. Baba Cool is the left most route on the face.Paul Piana describes it as " A perfect Route. All time classic. Climb this one! " He is right. I'd say it is a very solid 10A.
Protection
6 Bolts then a 2 bolt anchor. You will probably want to rap off to save your rope.
In my opinion Bab Cool is 10a. Even though Vern Phinney in his guide book has it rated as 9+. But then most of the 9+'s in Vern's book are 10a. The 10+'s are also 11a
I've climbed 10A's all over the country and I think that its on par with alot of other 10's that I've climbed. I also think that Wisconsin Beef is also really, really close to 10A. I think its listed as 9+ in the guidebooks.
At one point in time The Black Hills was a place where 5.9 was not a forgotten grade. There are a bunch of 5.9's on pine tree rock that are hard for the grade. Wasp is another hard 5.9. Now the black hills is turning into the land of bolted cracks. If you want to climb bolted cracks move to France, chizelmonkey.
Beware as all of the bolts on this route are loose and can't be tightened. Why hasn't the Coalition fixed this one? This does not make sense to me as there are very new Fixe Open Shuts and bolts for the anchors.
The bolts are not loose on Baba Cool. The hangers are loose on the bolts which allows them to spin; the bolts themselves are quite solid. I do intend to fix this situation and of course would accept the help of any anon. cowards on this project who would like to do something besides complain.
Yo Ron, I'll help. Never bolted before, so it's new to me. Always willing to learn a new skill, fact is I just learned the "Texas Sling". Gimme a call 3819800. It warms up, we fix Baba. -E
Superb route. Jay and I (mostly me I think, right Jay?) wanted to climb this on the last day of our trip to the Hills this summer. After being out there maybe 4-5 times in the last several years and each time wanting to climb this but not getting to do it, the climb had obtained a mythical quality for me. Well the sky was threatening and it was starting to thunder and sprinkle but hell with it! Gotta climb it. The rain was coming in from the other side of the Block and the route mostly stayed dry, and was quite a cap to a great trip. "Climb this one!" indeed.
Chopping Block
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