Whale's Back 

While the guide suggests that large hands would benefit the ascensionist, I did not find it so, and neither did my 5'5" female partner who has very small hands. Don't let that scare you off of the route.

Climbers with large hands will find the top part of this climb more difficult. I thought it was 5.10c. My partners with smaller hands said 5.10a or b.

The upper part of this route is a beauty! Sustained #3 friends, which is perfect hands for me, so I found it a little easier than the 11- rating.

What a stellar route! This wall doesn't get much traffic. The approach and the base of the wall kinda suck for walking (loose and no real trails) but the routes are good.

Right facing wide hands corner changes to left facing thin hands. Becomes perfect hands for a long way. A 70 might get back down with stretch but we trailed a rope. must do route!!

A 70m doesn't reach, we tried. The route is probably 130' tall.

We replaced the anchor in Sept. '07. One of the original bolts pulled out with not much effort (even still had the price tag on the bolt!), but the other huge weird bolt with homemade aluminum hanger is still there since I didn't have the right gear to try removing it and it's cool to see some original homemade funky stuff now and then (particularly when you don't have to rap from it!).

Be careful about placing cam(s) near the top of the first section, since it's easy for the rope to drag them into the crack when you get on the rest ledge.

Really fun, long route and great confidence booster for the grade (to be honest though, I'd call it a 10c or d with my hands).

dear Barnes,

thanks for replacing the bolts.

I think that it is OK to place the bolts in a new spot if you think that you can reduce the rope wear on the rock.

In this case, an anchor further right would have made the route easier to clean, and created far less rope drag.

my 70 did reach. (actually about 3 ft short on each end). amazing route!

My 70m didn't reach, not even close. I think the best strategy is to bring up the second from the anchors. You can then lower(or rap one strand) the second down to the ground. To clean the anchor you can rap with a 70m to a ledge to climbers left, pull the rope from this ledge, then do a 5.4? down climb 20'+/- climbers left of route.

I had six #2 camalots and wished I had eight, I had to set one of them backwards in the crack at the top of the bulge to keep rope drag/piece pushing to a minimum. Other than the rope management issues, this line is incredible. The rock is of the highest quality and there is a variety of different moves, easily one of the best 10's at the creek.