Magic Mike Wall Rock Climbing

This is the large south facing wall at the very base of The Cookbook. It has pretty amazing warmups to play on and a couple are almost magical they’re so darn unexpectedly good. They’re all natural with the exception of Grace Under Pressure. The area doesn’t have an abundance of room around the base as most of the routes actually start from a vegetated ledge system 30’ above the trail but it still accommodates a small group just fine.

Through all of the 90’s and earlier 2000’s the only warm up in the Cookbook was Deceivious so if you couldn’t start on 5.11 there wasn’t much reason to journey to this area and we all just excepted this as the Cookbook experience. In 2015 while up on The Prow, Dennis Buice and I started looking down at the arete right of Decievious which is now Grace Under Pressure but we couldn’t get to the bottom of the cliff face because the entire cliff line right of Decievious was an Impenetrable briar and roto thicket which grew down the hill and up the side of the cliff. So we rappelled in from the top to see if it was worth the time and effort to clear a path. Not only was it worth it but the entire wall was surprisingly good delivering some nice easier lines. We kicked ourselves for not doing the work of clearing out the base years earlier but that’s how development goes.
One route and then another which eventually becomes an area and after decades becomes a fully mapped out cliff line w/ easy access trails to all the right places but this happens usually over decades of smaller contributions. Most climbers start in a gym and never see a cliff until it’s a fully developed but all of those who clean, establish and maintain trails, routes and guidance services deserve much respect and appreciation from the rest of us because without them, our easy days with coffee, pets and friends at the cliff would not exist and nature would not be such an easy thing to add into our busy lives. Thanks to everyone who makes our climbing adventures possible.