The East Face of the Middle Gunsight, as viewed fr...
Description
This route follows a hidden line, which unfolds piece by piece with amazing climbing and perfectly clean rock.
P1 - From the top of the Blue Glacier, work up ramps, slabs, and cracks to a flake with twin hand cracks, just left of a dark corner. 5.6
P2 - Climb up th steep twin hand cracks, moving into the right crack/flake, and step right to belay on a ledge. 5.10b
P3 - Move right to the quartz dyke fist crack, followed by delicate face climbing and stemming (RPs) before moving right on a flake and awkward mantle out and right. 5.10c
P4 - Step left into perfect thin-hands splitter corner. Semi-hanging belay atop this. 5.10a
P5 - Work up thin corner on right, then move left into right-facing corner and finger crack, which pulls a bulge and becomes a mind-blowing splitter in amazing position. Save 1" cam for after the crux bulge. 5.10d
P6 - Straight up the runout, but featured slab, to where the rock steepens. Traverse left to large outside corner of the face, using long slings and small pro where available. 5.9
P7 - Follow cracks and corners up to the summit. 5.8
Location
From on the Blue Glacier, look up at the face (very foreshortened from this angle). You should be able to see twin hand cracks and a flake (almost right-facing). These form the start to pitch 2. With these landmarks, the route is easy to follow.
First off this route might just have the best rock in the entire range. While the W Face of N Gunsight might be harder and have more of a history the rock quality simply does not compare.
The crux pitches (p2-p5) on this climb are remarkably similar to the Godzilla-Sloe Children linkup at Index in quality, length and difficulty. Just add a crushing two day approach to some of the most remote peaks in the Lower 48.
I'm not one to link pitches at all. I like to stop as soon as possible, but the description above makes for some very short pitches. p2 & p3 are easily combined as are p3 & p4 resulting in two ~45m pitches with great belay ledges.
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