Your Favorite Slab

Not a hard one, but I remember finishing the slab pitch of White Punks on Dope with an ear to ear grin

Allen Sandersonwrote:

Some of favs in da Wasatch: intensive-care, dark-horse, mind-blow

LCC has so many to choose from. This list could be very long. 

Here is a slab in UT but not the Wasatch. It's waaay off the beaten path, down on the East side of Notch Peak: Fat Matt's Rib Shack

Looks like I'm going to be on GPA a lottttt this spring/summer!! Also who knows when the season for NC would be and how easy is it for me to stay there for free?

This is SO true. Has anyone else found that as you hit your late 40's slab climbing became a game of vision? I mean seriously, slab feet and edges are too far away for readers. Wearing progressives is ultimately confusing.

I'm thinking of trying some Shamir Workspace lenses. They are supposed to have a 0 to 10' depth of field. 

Drew Alldredge wrote:

where you need polarized glasses to find the credit card jug.

Samuel Parkerwrote:

Yankee Clipper in City of Rocks is a ride. Super consistent hard slab for over 150 feet. You get one break about 3/4 of the way up, but at that point you've earned it. First really hard slab route I ever tried and one I definitely want to get up clean one day. 

Y'all are making me actually want to get good at this style of climbing. Seems like nobody is ever stoked for it

How hard do you want it (insert jokes here)?

City of Rocks (plus Castle Rock) has oodles of slab routes, or routes involving actual friction slab at least in part. Drilling Fields/Lost World, as Sam mentions, has some hard stuff, but all grades, actually. Other parts of COR, too. Some are very very easy, but still fun, imo. 

Just be cautious, on the low grades. Some, like Lost World, are nicely bolted, but others have very little to zero pro of any sort. They get labeled trad, of course, because they most certainly aren't sport, lol! "Traditional" bitd included lots of soloing on easy terrain. Still does, but people forget that.

I enjoyed following/seconding the rope guns on Suncup slab  and the Tree start up Bath rock, in particular. Suncup has nada, except a bolted anchor top of the first pitch, and a single rumoured bolt somewhere or other. Tree start, depending on where you choose to meander, might be 4 pieces, tops, in 200+ feet of climbing. And, some very long runs before you find those few spots.

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/107383549/infinite

The Clamshell is the most intimidating one I can think of off the top of my head, even just seeing it across the way, from the trail (to something else, I forget just where)! Pretty good discussion in the comments, re history!

Best, Helen

EDIT to add route stuff

tenesmuswrote:

This is SO true. Has anyone else found that as you hit your late 40's slab climbing became a game of vision? I mean seriously, slab feet and edges are too far away for readers. Wearing progressives is ultimately confusing.

I'm thinking of trying some Shamir Workspace lenses. They are supposed to have a 0 to 10' depth of field. 

I wear contacts and have used bifocal contacts in the past to try to optimize near and distant vision. 

I now just use single correction lenses in each eye, but with one eye corrected for distance and the other for 'foot' distance.

This costs me some near vision, so I frequently need reading glasses, sometime even for guidebooks or the MP app. 

I also have a hard time seeing gear placements, but just sport climb and boulder now, so that's not really a problem.

I'd be interested in hearing how the Shamir lenses work, if you try them.

tenesmuswrote:

LCC has so many to choose from. This list could be very long. 

Here is a slab in UT but not the Wasatch. It's waaay off the beaten path, down on the East side of Notch Peak: Fat Matt's Rib Shack

Isn't this the route that you blamed your fall on your pants and then proceeded to tell Mike "it's only 5.9 up there, so you should finish bolting it."??

Bwahahahahha! 

Lots of good ones in Josh, as mentioned.

The Decompensator of Lhasa

The Official Route of the 1984 Olympics

Papa Woolsey

Run For Your Life

Walk on the wild side

I can't believe it's a girdle

For Yosemite:

I would second Stoners Highway. It's a perfect climb.

I would also suggest Wayward Son. Definitely a face climb, but it fits with the other off vertical routes mentioned here (like stoners, run for your life, stand and deliver, games without frontiers, duppy conquer, etc.) some really neat technical climbing on perfect rock IMO

And people should check out Riding on the Wind too. Wrigley's fresh breath traverse AKA cameron's lament offers some hard slab climbing on absolutely perfect stone.

Ankles Away comes to mind for the needles. Certainly not a "slab climb", but absolutely brilliant slabby seam climbing!

And I must say, I am in top a shader has maybe the most memorable slab move I have yet attempted.

Squamish has some incredible slabs too, although I haven't sampled too many.

And the mustache wall has a lot of fun off-vert face routes.

Screaming yellow zonkers and moons of pluto at smith are very cool off vert climbing as well. And all the bolted off vert stuff in the lower gorge. Try to be hip comes to mind.

Warpaint, great gig in the sky, so many more..

Potter Wonderlandwrote:

Also who knows when the season for NC would be and how easy is it for me to stay there for free?

Fall and winter for NC. Summers tend to be very rainy, and because many of the domes are south facing, will generally be way too hot. 

"Dike Hike/Monster Groove", Laurel Knob

"The Legendary F Bomb", Laurel Knob

Cedar Rock (North Side)

"Pawing the Void", Cedar Rock

These are just a few I happen to have pics of.

Slab is good.  Friends and I put up a new 5.9 in the Selkirks, N. Idaho last summer.  This is pitch 4 of 6 with more to come this year.  

As mentioned by several, western Carolina is the slab Mecca. The routes mentioned here are not even the beginning of the beginning or really touch on the best (a lot of which are on private land and unrecorded except in underground guides) but it would take you months of continuous climbing just to tag the best stuff.

That said, I now live in the Daks, and one of my new favorites anywhere is “Freudian Slip” on Big Slide. Perfect slab near the top of a mountain with the entire Great Range spread out behind you across the valley. I tweak the locals that it’s almost as sportingly protected as NC. The first pitch is one of those climbs that’s 5.9+ and every move is at least 5.9. It has all the feature you need, pretty much all ripples, divots, and tiny rounded slopers with maybe a half dozen positive holds for about 180’, stressful and insecure the whole way. My wife, who had only been climbing for a couple of years, seconded me without falling, and when she got to the belay she huddled with her eyes closed breathing heavily and then said, “Now I know why you guys do this.“ Then she opened her eyes and added, “ And I am never, ever, doing anything like that ever again.”

Slab. You gotta love it.

Friends don't let friends climb slab. its like roofing but you don't get paid ;) 

Potter Wonderlandwrote:

Looks like I'm going to be on GPA a lottttt this spring/summer!! Also who knows when the season for NC would be and how easy is it for me to stay there for free?

Our granite domes feel slimy in the summer. Minimal bolting and minimal features make slimy slabbing tough.

This is Yardarm on Stone Mountain, last week-

Darrington

Chapel pond slab in Keene Valley, NY

some of my favorite carolina slab climbs

Dum Dee Dum Dum 5.10a/c  mixed - the nose area -  looking glass rock NC interesting mix of crack, slab, & eyebrows

Hidden Agenda 5.11 mixed- hidden wall - looking glass rock NC

Anne Marie 5.8/9 - trad -  Hidden wall - looking glass rock NC

Buena Onda 5.12 - mixed  - pumpkintown  - Table rock SC 

Fresh Flesh 5.10 - sport - Pumpkintown - table rock sc

Stone wall action 5.11D - mixed/R/X - Main wall - Table rock SC

Seconds 5.9+ - mixed - Laurel knob NC

OR into Traditions 5.11 - mixed - Whiteside NC

Something at Big green should also be on this list most likely....

As if it hasn’t already been said enough: Western NC is a gem as far as slab climbing goes. Stone Mountain and Looking Glass are both awesome, although I’m no hardman so they certainly keep me on my toes.

A little more runout that I was used to but damn if it didn’t have my heart racing

The eyebrows of looking glass willingly accept many tricams!

As an alternative perspective, I regard slab climbs as Satan's handiwork, at the other end of the spectrum from off-widths, and equally evil.  As a long-time Gunkie, my philosophy is: I want holds! I want gear! Give me roofs, dihedrals, cracks and aretes. Save me from looking up 30 feet at a holdless expanse of nothingness to the next bolt. I find that climbing with both legs quivering and tears running down my cheeks (among other physical responses) is conducive neither to success nor enjoyment. I greatly admire those who can do it - and who love it - but if there is nothing to grab, I am running away. Loved the pictures of all the slab climbs, but I would only do most of them with a gun to my head. Even then, maybe.

Another vote for Crest Jewel.  Perfect rock, a stack of pitches, Half Dome over your right shoulder all the way up.  Just a stunner.  I've done it seven times.  Probably won't repeat it, but so many good memories.  Some of the moderate pitches are runout, however.

Mark, "friends don't let friends climb slab  " Ed sport climber E.   personally I feel its just like roofing but you don't get paid.   BTW i am reasonably good at both but like slab climbing a hell of a lot more than roofing and will gladly do it for free  ;)   Heck I like slab climbing so much I invest a lot of money to do it.