My partner, Rhett, and I may be headed back up to Laurel Knob next month. Planning on getting back on Groover as we were stopped at the top of P1 due to water, ice, and daylight...we went at the beginning of February.

We have some topos, etc, but I have the following questions:

The gear belays at the top of pitches P2, P3, and P4 look to be at good stances. Is this the case? Or are they more of a 'hanging' belay? How vertical is the rock at these locations?

The P4 traversing is well spelled out at the CCC.com forum, but how is the gear once you get in the second water groove? Less runout than the traverse?

Righto, well I believe that to be it for now. Thanks in advance.

The gear belays are basically sit on your butt on a slab and add gear. It is nowhere near vertical.
The groove after the traverse is WAY run out, but the climbing is not that hard. If you got this far, it should not be a problem, unless of course it is wet.
One word of caution, you very well may get wet from the rap on the way down as it follows a groove that ofter runs.

Thanks for the information.

My partner will have P4...

We will have rain gear and will probably throw it on before the rap if it looks wet.

Hey, thanks for all the hard work on securing and preserving this area.

I might add that the last pitch had no pro that we found :-), but was pretty easy.

scoTt

One of you guys that's been up on Groover should add it to the routes in the Laurel Knob section. I haven't climbed it yet.

JL

I'll add it soon...

We climbed it this weekend...I had a stomach virus and gave all of the leading to my partner who did it in fine style. Lower pitches were very straight forward. P4, after the traverse, presented my partner with 60' of run out until good gear and a belay was found. P5 was short and well protected to the anchors at the top of Forbidden Fruit. We rapped from here as P6 was wet and slippery with lichen.