VMC Direct Direct 

P6. Climb through blocky headwall, moving right then up a shallow lt-facing corner to slabs. Continue w/poor protection to the cow's mouth.

The description from Rock Climbing New England (S. Green) Pitch 6: A long, scary lead with dubious protection and tricky crux. Surmount a steep headwall (5.10) and climb a left-facing corner to easier slabs above to belay in the Cow’s Mouth.

Can you give me beta on the "scary lead with dubious protection" Any recent Beta???

Thanks a lot
Paul

On P6 we climbed right from belay under roof and up a short left facing corner, two not great pins here and nothing else I could find. Next traverse left a bit and clip another pin just over lip and over into shallow right facing corner. This section is hard and daring. Next move up and right heading towards the right side of a massive tottering pillar which seems like it should fall off any moment now. Gear is challenging through this section and we tried to stay off the pillar as much as possible. From even with the pillar go up and right to the belay in left side of cow's mouth.

Note that the climbing after the 5.11 slab moves on P5 is engaging with not the best gear. 5 and 6 are heady pitches.

Also, we did two full rope length pitches directly above the cow's mouth and they were challenging with long runouts, route finding, wet slippery mossy sections, grass hummock clawing....oh and lots black flies. Not the "easy slabs" we were expecting.

Keep right through the krumholtz along the top of cliff and look for the big square "heli pad", a good trail passes along the south/east corner of it which leads down around to the base.

This is a hard route and is not the place for the average 5.10 leader.

We did the first four pitches yesterday with the straight up variation on the third pitch. The route is fantastic. Beautiful thin crack and corner climbing.
We had 2 ropes for rappelling, but it looked to me like a single 70M rope would get you down.
Bring RP's and wires and many finger sized cams. I don't think that we placed anything bigger than a green Camalot on the route.

Pitch 5 is hard.

Thanks for the beta. It helped. I did VMC DD July 2010. The pitch 6th of VMC is still Quite scary although climbing is easier. You can stretch pitch 5 through overlap and then move left to a new bolted belay. Then do the rest of old pitch 6th together with pitch 7th. Cows mouth was the crux for me. It is probably easier for people with smaller hands-you can place them fully into the crack. I highly recommend taping just for that move. Move right after Cows mouth to find a rap station. You can rap the route without the last 5.6 crappy pitches full of black flies.

Thanks for all of your comments, they provided some crucial info for my and my friend's ascent. Joe Vitti's description is a pretty accurate account of our experience on this climb. The first 4 pitches were beautiful, great climbing, and went way too fast. The following 5 pitches (or 6? who knows) were slow going, with loose rock, wet sections, and difficult routefinding. The two or three pitches we did after the cow's mouth were runout on sketchy rock, with no real landmarks.

If I were to do it again I would almost certainly rap off the 4th pitch... maybe even climb them again.

(Disclaimer - I haven't lead this route yet, only followed)

Best route in the East.
Would have been happier with two green aliens or the like for the second pitch.
Also, going right then up at the start of P5 looked very unlikely. Going straight up was very hard and reachy but only for a couple of moves until you reach a nice horizontal break.

Rich-- your ready for Lab Wall direct finish.....