Stampede 

Beautiful topos for Cochise routes. Thanks for the effort!

toofast says "my pleasure." thanks for your comments.

After climbing the route to the right of Stampede we did the opening pitch just for fun at the end of the day.

Without doing the entire route I cannot comment on the grade and/or stars beyond the 1st pitch. That said, the first pitch provides a fun bouldery start up some tenuous face climbing to the anchors.

I'd recommend everyone do it just to get a feel for face climbing at the Stronghold. Nearly everything looks big after that route.

Experience your own slab dismorphia today and give it a try!

~Susan

I finally got on it last weekend; wonderful and the crux was fairly easy 11. I had been put off by the talk of runouts and there were a few but on easy rock. The first and third pitches were great, although the first got your slab work going fast; the second and crux pitch was also good and airy.

this climb is solid 11a, and awesome.

EDIT
at the end of pitch 5 you will find yourself on a giant ledge. directly in front of you, on the far right side of the ledge, there is a line of bolts going up a cleft in the rock. unless you want to participate in a cleaning effort (which you may) i would not suggest following this line of bolts as the rock is crumbly and a little scary toward the top.

this pitch goes at about 11a and deposits you on the right side of the formation, where you can either scramble left up to the summit or rap off to the right.

again, i would suggest you simply go all the way to the left side of the ledge and finish on the last 2 pitches of stampede, which are of the highest quality.

To add to Jon's comments above...

We followed the bolts in the right side cleft. It was an OK pitch, but is still a bit crumbly. The benefit of this is that with one rappel and a short bit of scrambling you can be at your packs much quicker & easier than if you top out.

If you have never been to the top or done any of the left-side finishes, then I would recommend going that route. However, if you have already summited The Sheepshead on multiple occasions and have already done some of the left-side finishes, then I recommend the direct finish and it's easier descent.

Just my 2 cents.

What a great route!

Does anyone have any better beta for finding this route? Tried to find it but ended up on "Unknown (Mad Cow Disease?)" GPS Cord. would be great.

The location of this route is obvious: It begins in the gully on the right side of Sheepshead on a beautiful golden brown, south-facing slab. This slab is directly opposite the start of Sheep Thrills (the dike of Sheep Thrills, which is on the formation right of Sheepshead, is very obvious on the approach). Steep scrambling up the gully leads to the start, and two bolts up a steep weakness gain the slab itself.

We topped out via the grainy/loose direct finish without traversing the massive ledge system. The belay at the top of this pitch is off a single bolt, with a second bolt protecting a final step-across move nearby (this anchor setup is sensible). Rapping the unknown route right of Stampede (listed in the database) with a single 70m rope was fast and easy:

From the belay, we looked down below us and noticed a cairn atop a small buttress at the edge of the face... 30 seconds of easy scrambling leads to an exposed stance on the outside face of this buttress and an anchor equipped for rappel.

1: Rap to an anchor on big ledge.
2: Can't remember this one but it may have been a short rap to a semi-hanging stance.
3: Rap to an anchor climber's left of a big tree on a huge ledge.
4: Rap to an anchor at a stance just underneath, and hidden by, a massive dead log wedged in the gully system.
5: Rap into the gully to a point 50' from the start of Stampede.

One of my most favorite routes. Love that start.

This route is named "Stampede". Note the lack of an exclamation point.

Fixed