This is a really long right facing corner. Start up a little technical crux and fight up to a rest on a sandy slope. Good .12- climbing to here. Then sprint up a double overhanging corner to a couple hand jams at the anchor. All fingers. Mega 5.12.
Location
Towards the left end of BB Buttress. Just past Disco Machine Gun and a cool juniper (the x-mas tree?).
Protection
In TCU-speak, I used 2 purples, 14 blues, 6 yellows, 1 orange, 2 reds.
I submitted the above route because it deserves some traffic as it is totally classic and never gets done, while poor Ruby's gets overworked every decent weekend. The dirty little secret is that Christmas Tree is probably just as difficult or even harder than Ruby's (of course, so are a lot of 5.12s in the Creek...shhh!) I replaced the anchor and moved it down a little off of a rope eating ledge, so it's slightly shorter than the book suggests (it only eliminated a bit of 5.8 sandy groveling). This route will be easier the smaller your digits are. Good luck - gun for the handjams next to the anchor- oops, I've already said too much...
Hey Chris ,thanks for lowering that anchor. One of the most dramatic climbing moments i've witnessed was a friend of mine onsighting this beast. He was resting his shoulder on that first big block of choss when it broke. He fell and ripped about 5 tcu's before a green alien held. He probably fell about 50 feet and technically blew the onsight.. So although the crack appears to not change size it actually gets a little bigger as you go, so i suggest about 7 blue tcus followed by 7 green aliens, they are just a tad bigger.Props to anyone leading this route.
Battle of the Bulge Buttress
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