Type: Ice, 200 ft (61 m)
FA: unknown
Page Views: 2,521 total · 16/month
Shared By: Chris Wenker on Mar 2, 2011
Admins: Edward Medina, Leo Paik, John McNamee, Frances Fierst, Monty, Monomaniac, Tyler KC

You & This Route


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Warning Access Issue: Yield to mining vehicle traffic DetailsDrop down

Description Suggest change

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 Suggest change

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 Suggest change

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?

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