The Crossing

This route is a stellar way to climb a ton of hard friction slab without frazzling your nerves with mind-frying runouts. It's not always a sport climb and there are certainly places where a fall would be undesirable, but it's better protected than many of the other Apron slabs: no three bolt .10c pitches here. Most of the pitches are 5.11 and your feet and toes will remember the continuous nature of the climbing for at least a few days afterwards. The .12d is completely optional as it's a short, steep boulder problem you can easily pull through.

P1 (.11b): Right off the bat, 'warm up' on a very thin mossy slab that climbs out of the forest above a downed tree. You can start from under/behind the tree but the slab is pretty dirty lower down. I started from a ledge a little higher. As the select book states, it is a rather cruel warmup.

P2 (.10b): Much easier and shorter slab. Belay amongst trees on the ledge.

P3 (.10d): Climb the well-protected slab directly above. 50m long, this pitch feels harder than some of the later .11a pitches. Very sustained. Ends just below Snake.

P4 (.11a): Cross Snake and angle right. Slightly thinner at one point but much shorter than the previous pitch.

P5 (.11d): The business. Move right, then up until you encounter a steepening, thin section. Turn on the magic footwork switch, weld your feet to some miniscule features and hope for the best. Doesn't ease up much until you're clipping the anchor.

P6 (.11a): The guide says .11b; feels more like .10c-.11a at most, maybe because it's much, much easier than the previous pitch.

P7 (.11a): Feet hurting yet? Another thin, low-angle slab leads up to a belay below a steeper section of slab.

P8 (.11b or c?): The guide bills this as another non-descript .11a but I found it to be a major 'sting in the tail'. A bleak bulge of 5.11 glacier glass in the middle of the pitch with a little too much sun on it felt much, much harder than all but the crux slab pitch. Perhaps this is instead the '.11b with a bulge' described as P6 or perhaps my feet were just tired by this point.

P9 (.12d or .9 A0): Glassy and beautiful glacier polish leads to the short, steep headwall. Checking out the moves briefly seemed to put the section at about V6 or so. Bolts are right in your face, so go for it! Dirt on the slab above made the subsequent easier climbing a bit scarier.

P10 (.10a): I think I may have combined this with P9 but I can't recall. In any case, the climbing remains easier but becomes more and more dirty. If I'd had a brush, 10 minutes would have been enough to create an improved path through the thickening murk.