Thousand Pints of Lite  5.7

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Type:  Sport, 3 pitches, 180 feet Consensus:  5.7 [details] FA:  Ron Olevsky Submitted By:  Julian Smith on Apr 30, 2010 You & This Route  |  Other Opinions (3) Your todo list: Your stars: Your rating: -none- [change] Your ticklist: [add new tick]

Climber starting up P2. We easily combined P1 & P2...

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Description 

This is an awesome line that ascends wonderful varnish chicken heads, jugs, and burnishes to the top of Island of the Sky in 3 short pitches. Definitely it is worth combining it with a route like Will’s Rush (1st pitch) to get off the ground and have a multi-pitch outing.

To get to the start of the route, climb something like the 1st pitch of Will’s Rush to reach Intersection Ledge. From the top of Will’s Rush, look up and to the right to see an obvious 3-pin anchor, probably with webbing slung between the pins. To reach the anchor, ascend a short chimney and then work to the right across an easy slab, passing a fixed pin along the way. Officially this is the 1st pitch, but you might find to be so easy that it is hardly noticeable.
Pitch 2 - Once at the 3-pin anchor, head up on awesome varnish jugs to reach another chain anchor in 50 feet or so. You will pass 2 pins along the way.
Pitch 3 – Continue up more varnish jugs for 80 feet, passing 6 pins to reach a 2 pin anchor atop a nice ledge at the top of the route. You will be almost at the top of the Island of the Sky at this point.

To get down, head north (climbers left) for 200 feet to reach a flat, sandy area that has some bushes in it. Turn back to the west and work you way down to a flat ledge. Look for a nice chain anchor on a north-facing wall.

Though it is only 115 feet back down to the Intersection Ledge, if you are using a single rope, there will be another anchor you can stop at about 90% of the way back down to Intersection Ledge. It is an easy down climb from this anchor to the ledge, but it may be better to stop and re-rig the rappel anyway, since the next rappel station is below Intersection Ledge, and you won’t have do down-climb to the next anchors.

The next set of anchors is below Intersection Ledge, directly below from where you rappelled from the top. However, they are down inside a little chimney feature and can be hard to find unless you look down!
It is 115 feet from this set of anchors back down to the ledge at the top of the approach gully. There is another rappel station located about half way down, so you can split this up into 2 rappels if you only have a single rope.

Location 

The start of this route in on Intersection Ledge. It is easy to find from the top of Will's Rush 1st pitch. Look up and to the right to find a 3-pin anchor, which will probably have some webbing threaded between the pins. Enjoy!

Protection 

Mostly quickly draws will be all you need, but take a few long slings for wrapping around varnish knobs and some larger stoppers for wedging between the plates of varnish, if you want to cut down on the run-out between the fixed gear.

Photos of Thousand Pints of Lite Slideshow

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Varnish jugs on P2	Kerry nearing the end of the route. Photo by Lesl...	BETA PHOTO: Thousand Pints of Lite as we pitched it out. P1 is...