Your Favorite Slab

Salamanizer Skiwrote:

I think Glacier point is a standard for pure slab.

FYI to OP, not all the good GPA slab routes have entries here on MP. It’s worth having one of the old Valley guidebooks.I think the same holds for the Meadows. 

Lone Pinewrote:

A solid advice given the state of the bolts on some of those routes.

Between Nothingness and Eternity has good hardware.

I've always preferred the kinds of slab climbs that connect obvious features with thin moves in between, as opposed to just a blank slate of nothingness for a whole rope length. The kinds with intermittent foot (and mind) rests. Suicide and the Meadows seem to have these more than the Valley, IMO. Someone mentioned The Green Dragon though, which I thought had some of the most technical (and cool!) movement of any slab that I've ever climbed. 

The Backside of Enchanted Rock in Texas with Routes like Stranger Than Friction, Bold Talk for alone Eyed Fat Man, Texas Radio, Mexican Radio, and the Gravitron!  https://www.commonclimber.com/texas-radio.html

timothy fisherwrote:

NC has been mentioned but not Rumbling Bald? Of the steeper slab Wild Hickory Nuts hard to beat. Lake View, Breakfast of Champions, Rusty Redneck. Many others.

Big oversight here. 

Pull the Plug

Mennonite Surf Party

Krispy Kreme 

And I they're tall enough to include here, Harvest  and Biscuits. 

Horse Cove Crag as a whole belongs here, as does Paralleling at Big Green. 

Team Machine at the New should also be on this list. 

Space Babble, Stoners Highway, Black Primo, Quicksilver and Freewheelin, all on Middle Cathedral Rock are my favorites. The setting alone is hard to beat, not to mention the amazingly featured stone.

I really enjoyed Mother Earth over on Middle too. One of the more memorable routes in that area. Always wanted to do Smith-Crawford too, just haven’t gotten a chance to give it a go yet. Pieces of Eight was downright terrifying… I’d rather attempt Black Primo in sneakers then get on that thing again. 

Jon Clarkwrote:

Between Nothingness and Eternity has good hardware.

Not the 2nd pitch if i remember correctly. You can always rap from the top of P1 anyway

Mother Earth fits right in, Salamanizer! Some killer pitches on that, and it’s a little steeper over there.

The best GPA route I got on was Tightrope, that’s a thriller with a really cool line, unlike some of those non descript Apron routes. I don’t think it gets done much. 

Obvious noob here, but the final pitch of The Young and the Rackless has a pretty fun slab section IMO....what other moderate slab do I need to be checking out in CO?

Lone Pinewrote:

A solid advice given the state of the bolts on some of those routes.

Really? No one's replaced all those 1/4" yet? I replaced 33 bolts on that side of Dome Rock almost 20 years ago (yikes!)...would have thought the rest were long upgraded?

Screaming Meanie on Rogers Rock,  lake George though the belay bolts desperatly need replaceing. 

Kristian Solemwrote:

A solid list. I think you and I have done all of those together, with the notable exception, on my part, of Ishi. I made one low quality attempt on that thing and left shaking my head.

I'll add, since no-one has mentioned it yet, anything left of Tobin's Dihedral on Dome Rock. Right there is the best collection of mega-classic slab climbs, all in one small area, on perfect granite, anywhere (IMO). There are about 30 climbs in a row and not one is less than classic. One, asteroid belt, might not be called "slab," since it's an incipient crack. But a couple of notable examples would be Between Nothingness and Eternity, Welcome to Dome Rock, About Face, Carsonogenic, Carsonoma, and Skid Row. Bring your A-Game and performance enhancing drugs...   .

Kris, we certainly did most of those together.  We did some damn hard slab climbing together!

As you mentioned Ishi was not with you because I could never do the last hard move to the crack.  I'm just a little too short, just like on Seizure.  

The other one that we didn't do together is Mystery Acheivement.  I did that with Mike Waugh (although he couldn't do it) back before I met you.  I did the second ascent after Kauk.  I'm not sure it has had a third.  I know The Iceman (Drew Rollins) tried it when he was sending all the Meadows hard routes (B&Y, You Asked for It, etc.) but he could never put it together.

Table of Contents- Tuolumne

Serpentine- Suicide

Sundance- Suicide

Mickey Mantle- Suicide

Goodrich Pinnacle- Yose Valley (great slab pitch crux up high) 

WPOD- Needles CA (has a good slab pitch up near the top) 

Wandering Taoist - Tollhouse

Skywalker - Danland

Little Baldy in Sequoia NP has several good slab routes. 

** Boulders ** 

Blue Suede Shoes- Yose Valley

King Smear- Jtree

Stem Gem- Jtree (after the stem part)

Big Rock Candy Mountain, and many other areas in the South Platte.

Just thought of another good one: Thin Slice on Granite Mountain near Prescott, Arizona.

Jon Clarkwrote:

Between Nothingness and Eternity has good hardware.

It also has knobs.

Kristian Solemwrote:

A solid list. I think you and I have done all of those together, with the notable exception, on my part, of Ishi. I made one low quality attempt on that thing and left shaking my head.

I'll add, since no-one has mentioned it yet, anything left of Tobin's Dihedral on Dome Rock. Right there is the best collection of mega-classic slab climbs, all in one small area, on perfect granite, anywhere (IMO). There are about 30 climbs in a row and not one is less than classic. One, asteroid belt, might not be called "slab," since it's an incipient crack. But a couple of notable examples would be Between Nothingness and Eternity, Welcome to Dome Rock, About Face, Carsonogenic, Carsonoma, and Skid Row. Bring your A-Game and performance enhancing drugs...   .

I mentioned Dome Rock upthread. Those are the routes I had in mind.

Not Hobo Greg wrote:

Darrington! There’s stuff there that’s truly no hands, butt out pure friction. Long stuff too!

Agreed Darrington, Green Giant Buttress - Dreamer or 3 O'clock Rock, Silent Running. 

"Anchors Away is one of my favorites. There is potential for it to be pushed past its high point too, by someone who’s toes aren’t yet riddled with tendinitis from years of hand drilling on mythical stances."

When Woodward and I were on a little binge of extending GPA routes we looked at pushing Anchors Away higher.  The rock quality started to noticeably deteriorate, and I remember we lost interest in investing any more time/effort within a pitch.  It would certainly not continue at the quality of the first pitch.  Kind of disappointing because it ended a run of some good extensions, including Lucifer's Shoes (extending Sailing Shoes until it linked into Lucifer's Ledge.) Talk about a mythical stance - the first bolt off the original SS high anchor.  We took turns whipping from a runout (non)stance for quite a while before we could get a hole going.  It was so featureless and slick we had a hard time dropping both hands, much less holding the drill while swinging the hammer with any more force than a light tap.  Fun memories of an epic bolt.