The Cleft  WI3

431 page views Good page?

Type:  Ice, 1 pitch, 200 feet Consensus:  WI3 [details] FA:  Season:  cold Submitted By:  Chris Wenker on Mar 2, 2011 You & This Route  |  Other Opinions (2) Your todo list: Your stars: Your rating: -none- [change] Your ticklist: [add new tick]

BETA PHOTO: The Cleft (WI3), Camp Bird Road, Ouray, CO. Photo...

Add Photo  Add Comment    Printer View

Yield to mining vehicle traffic MORE INFO >>> Revenue and Camp Bird Mines have resumed mining activities further up Camp Bird Rd. A new sign posted in February 2013 caused some tension as described in: www.watchnewspapers.com/view/full_story/21840965/article-Ten>>> Please refrain from blocking the road, yield to oncoming mining vehicle traffic, and be careful of rockfall and icefall. Please share the road to minimize future access issues with the road's multiple user groups. This information is a public crowdsourcing effort between the Access Fund, and Mountain Project. You should confirm closures, restrictions, and/or related dates. Keeping climbing areas open and conserving the climbing environment

Description 

From the road, you will first need to kick step and/or snow wallow up a couple hundred feet to the base of the ice pitch. Belay in a shallow alcove on the right. At the start of the ice, a length of black irrigation pipe was frozen into the route.
Both Burns (1997:177) and Roberts (2005:158) say the route is 200-250 feet long. For us, The Cleft actually only hosted about ~50 feet of ice, and then involved snow wallowing to the end of the rope. Maybe in a different year there's a longer stretch of vertical ice.

Location 

As you approach the Skylight area (but before you get to the Skylight climb itself), The Cleft is the first big gully on the right just past the Poser's Lounge drytooling rockshelter.
From the road, looking way up into the Cleft you can see a large tree growing nearly horizontally out of the left canyon wall. The climb ends somewhere underneath there.

Protection 

A couple of screws, maybe a light rock rack in thin conditions.
About 30 feet up the ice pitch, there is a steel cable strung through a little rock overhang on the right; some leaver-biners on the cable suggest its past use as a rap station. But this station is located only about 1/2 of the way through the ice pitch.
Instead, both Burns and Roberts say to rappel the route off trees. But, at ~50m, getting over to the obvious tree on the left looked sketchy in the snow conditions we found. That tree would make a solid rap station if you can reach it (but I didn't see any slings on it).
Alternately, at 60m (directly below the overhead powerlines), you may find some blobs of ice; you can v-thread or bollard those. Otherwise...keep going up to some other unseen trees?