This route ascends the left flank of the Leaning Wall. If you want pure adventure when you come to Zion, hop on this line. I found this route to provide more adventure than many aid routes in the area.
With runouts plentiful, and plenty of wideness, I recommend this route for pure excitement. I'm not saying that this route is so hard you need to train for it, but I will say that this route will separate the men from the boys. Leave energy for the ending overhanging v-slot.
Easily done in a day by a quick party.
More involved than the Northwest Buttress of Angel's Landing, and sure as hell harder than its trade neighbor Spaceshot.
—TDA
Protection
Full free desert rack. One #2 Angle or possibly a #3 angle. For god's sake, leave it if you use it!
did this climb last weekend and it was not that bad. if it got more traffic it would be alot better. did not bring a angle and did not see where i was suppose to want one. unless it was to double up some of those single piton belays.
Just did this route and it was quite adventuresome. The crux on pitch 6 is protected by a small hex with old tattered perlon pounded into a hole. This may be the hole Troy was referring to for the angle? This section would really benifit from a more solid anchor than what is there. We pulled on the piece to get through but it was still a bit scary, the move felt harder than 5.10 and falling on the old perlon was not very comforting because if I remember right you would hit a ledge in a 25-30 foot fall if the hex pulled or perlon broke.
Some of it, well, a whole lot of it is just awkward. We did the Headache route at the tunnel crags the next day and that's way better for sure. I guess Vernal's just more continuous free climbing that the weekend warrior can handle. That's about all it's got going for it. But it was kinda cool that we did Vernal Equinox on the Vernal Equinox.
Did Equinox about a week ago. It's definitely an adventure route and you should be fond of chimneys. Thought I would post some info about what we found because it doesn't seem to get done very often.
The fixed hex on the crux pitch is definitely hammered in good. The cord on it is very bleached and is ratty. I didn't feel comfortable clipping it, let alone falling on it (which might have been influenced by my experience with a fixed sling breaking last summer on El Cap). I tried to get the hex out, but to no avail. It would have been nice to get it out and put something else in its place due to the runout and relative difficulty of that section. Instead, I climbed to the right of the hex and placed a couple okay pieces to the right. I climbed to the right of that section so I wouldn't have a bad swing in case of a fall. The climbing in that section is brittle and probably just as hard as the standard way but at least I wasn't clipping that nasty cord.
Also, we missed the pin on top of the 2nd pitch (5.8 chimney) that was indicated on our topo. Also, we missed the pin that was supposed to the be on the crux pitch's intermediate belay (at least according to our topo). I don't know if these pins are gone or we just overlooked them. Finally, the pin at the top of the crux pitch is looking kind of bad. A large dinner plate of rock had broken off in the direction of pull at that belay, thereby exposing about half the pin. Couldn't girth hitch because the rock is intact above the pin. There is no easy way to back it up so we linked the crux pitch with the next pitch for one long, rope drag pitch.
On the first ascent, this route had substantial aid.
We did the free ascent on-sight, no fixed ropes, no topo, no nothing, only about a week after the F.A.
Normally, I am opposed to re-naming routes when they go free, but given that this is an Olevsky route I will point out that the appropriate name as a free climb is 'Babes In The Sandbox'.
What does it being a Olevsky route have to do with anything? Nice job on the FFA, but everyone knows it as Vernal Equinox, and in my opinion that is what it should stay as.
RSS Feed
