PRINT: Rock Climb Funky Bolt, City of Rocks

Funky Bolt

5.9 R, Trad, 160 ft (48 m),

Avg: 3 from 193 votes
FA: Steele, Stroud
Idaho > S Idaho > City of Rocks > Parking Lot Rock > Parking Lot Rock - East

Access Issue: (1) Weather Wall, Yellow Wall, & all the crags north of Twin Sisters are CLOSED. (2) No trash cans. (3) Highlining temporary ban in place for CIRO and CRSP Details

(1) The area, crags, and routes just north of the Twin Sisters are on private land and the landowner recently posted no trespassing notices at the gated road/trail to the area. Any access of these areas and routes is trespassing. The area was closed by the landowner due to trespassing, illegal camping, fires & trash, and disregard of owner's privacy.
Please be respectful of the land owner's wishes and do not climb or hike here until further notice. This includes White Lightning, Skinner Roof, Weather Wall, Yellow Wall, Larry's Annihilation, Needle Rock, Mississippi Fred's, and Secret Tom's. Park officials and CRAG are working to regain access to this valuable climbing resource. Be patient and check back for updates.
(2) No trash cans anywhere in City of Rocks: urlzs.com/c4eZH
(3) HIGHLINING IS PROHIBITED
By the authority of the park manager, Highlining at City of Rocks National Reserve and Castle Rocks State Park is temporarily prohibited as of August 28, 2019.

The park(s) is reviewing highlining activities. Here are Google Drive links to the closure and the updated Code of Regulations for CIRO. drive.google.com/open?id=1y… and drive.google.com/open?id=1Y…

Description

The nice crack right of the 2 all-bolted lines on the south end of the east face. It starts thin and hard, eases up, gets tough again, and finally eases up yet one more time. The bolt protects the upper crux, whereas down low the protection is tough to place. The top is very runout, but easy. Stemming and dropknees are a neccesity on this route.

Protection

There is 1 good bolt on the route. Otherwise bring small to medium gear. The anchors are a group of slings wrapped around a horn, so bring extras just in case. Also 2 ropes for the rap.

Photos [Hide ALL Photos]

It is difficult to stop and place gear in the first 20ft of Funky Bolt. There is a great hex placement right after the lieback start.

Funky Bolt

Me enjoying Funky Bolt. Photo by SP.

Great route. Totally burly at 5.9. <br>
A must for any City of Rocks tick list.<br>
One of my favorites!

Great route. Totally burly at 5.9. A must for any City of Rocks tick list. One of my favorites!

Dr. Sciences starting up 'Funky Bolt'

A difficult spot.

Fun climbing with some tricky gear.

The Top-out!

Comments [Hide ALL Comments]

Guy H.
Fort Collins CO

You can get down with 1 rope on this climb by using the 2 bolt anchor on the sport route to climbers' left. Mar 17, 2005

Nathan Fisher
St George

5.9

Led this one the other day, and I have a different perspective.Very difficult to place pro down low, due to the lieback, however, you can slot a hex in the obvious constriction. Above the bolts, the gear is predominately large nut size, and I started running out, that is if you go all the way to the slung horn, which I recommend. Very runout at the finish, but also very easy.

But as Guy says, use 1 rope, and do 2 rappels. Sep 5, 2005

Rob Man
SLC UT

5.9

Good route solid for the grade Oct 24, 2005

rpc
Portland, OR

The "R" part happens at the top above all difficulties on terrain 5.5 or easier. Great route. From what little I recall, after the initial weird move off the deck, you can jam the crack (which becomes progressively more flaring) to the "funky bolts". Apr 19, 2006

David Shiembob
slc, ut

5.9+ R

A little more than I bargained for for my warm-up route. Solid for the grade. I found it hard to protect the upper section, even before the 5.5 slab. Long pitch, 170-180 feet. Lieback? I didn't at all. May 15, 2007

susan peplow
Joshua Tree

5.9

Actually, there are two bolts on the route but the first one is probably the name for the route. It is a beat SMC hanger with half of the bolt shaft hanging out and bent. A foot higher or so is a better bolt. Although the route goes higher to a slung horn you can move off left to use intermediate chains for TR and easy rappel. We had 70m cords and had no problem using 1 cord. A 60m should work, but beware.

Susan Aug 14, 2007

Andy Laakmann
Bend, OR

5.9 R

Fun route, but be solid at the grade. Not recommended for budding 5.9 leaders. Aug 28, 2008

Brian B Ballard
Laramie, WY

A Heady Lead especially up top. Worth the trip to the Horn. I recommend, going out left at the top. I went straight up found one last potential placement as passed it as my stance was above it and then cut out right onto lichen cover slab, Sketchy! May 18, 2009

Bad Sock Puppet

5.9 R

I was only able to get a few pieces of gear in the lower half that I actually felt confident about. The fact that the two bolts are so close to each other, and that one is old and badly bent tells me that someone probably took a huge whipper off the runout section and gave the older bolt hell. There's room for bigger gear on the second half. I threw in a #1 Camalot before making the 40ft runout to the horn. If you want there are a few small chicken heads that you can sling on the runout, but they're not needed. Jul 19, 2009

Ted Farley
Bozeman, Mt

my first 5.9 gear lead at the city. offsets were good for the flare at the bottom. very cool though and highly recommended. Jul 24, 2010

Kevin Volkening

5.9

Similar experience a few years back with this being one of my first 5.9 gear lines. Feel very strongly the R needs to be removed May 1, 2011

Landon McBrayer
Salt Lake City, UT

Today I saw a guy break his ankle on this route by blowing the stemming moves above the bolt and hitting the 'slab' below. Ouch. On a more positive note, the lower crack, while flared in places, protects well. Jun 29, 2011

Greg Gavin
SLC, UT

5.9

Great route! The bottom protects well just be sure not to commit to a lie back, and screw yourself out of stances. I used 2 stoppers (DMM offsets), and a the rest protects well with a single rack up the 3 inches. I traversed over to the chains for the slab to the left so take my gear beta with a grain of salt. The funky bolt looks like it may have been drilled with haste on lead, and seems to be at an angle instead of straight in to the rock. Sep 12, 2011

Finn The Human
The Land of Ooo

5.9+ R

As a taller climber I found this route to be pretty stout. Moving up the crux past the bolt required some weird back-step & knee-drop action. My shorter partners just stemmed up without too much hassle. Sep 12, 2011

Crag Turkey
Liberty Wells, UT

5.9+ R

Great route, but I would say the R is warranted. less so, if you don't take it to the horn. My main reason for saying this is the flare throughout the route is tricky to protect. I think one could safely protect it with offset nuts, hexes or tricams. If you only bring cams expect some heady, albeit easy run outs. Bottom is easier to layback, but I prefer some protection. Apr 18, 2016

Tony B
Around Boulder, CO

5.9 PG13

PG-13 seems more fair. The crux isn't R, and the fall is not a grounder or ledge fall... so yeah, it's not too bad. Caution merited though. Jun 16, 2016

Ansel Higgs
Graz

5.9 R

Crap gear (can protect start layback with a nut in the right crack) leads to two bolts and then more crap gear to the 30ft (easy) slab runout to a Boulder with a dozen shit cords on it. Guidebook's intermediate anchor at 90 feet does not exist. Rapped from horn to anchors for "spud meets hammerhead" then to ground. Jul 18, 2019

Max Ismailov
Holtsville, NY

There's a (docile) hornet's nest in the crack right above the layback start.

Definitely do this route! Awesome crack climbing, great gear, and thought-provoking bolt-protected stemming. I'm 5'8" and no dropknees were necessary. Also don't think this should get any kind of safety rating, felt very chill and in line with other climbs at the city. Get on it and don't be a weenie Sep 29, 2021

drewp
Vegas

another note that the midway bolted anchor depicted in the guidebook topo does not actually exist, so you cannot just do the first pitch (as we tried). The anchor on spud meets hammerhead is quite a bit left of the line and only useful as a rap station after taking it to the top. Jun 19, 2023

Brad Burns
Story, WY

5.9- PG13

youtu.be/1kw22GfWoXQ Sep 26, 2023