PRINT: Rock Climb Gravity's Rainbow, Vedauwoo

Gravity's Rainbow

5.11c R, Trad,

Avg: 2.5 from 2 votes
FA: Chace & Levin, 1978
Wyoming > Laramie Area > Vedauwoo > Nautilus

Access Issue: Bad Bolt Submission Form Details

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Description

Gravity's Rainbow climbs up to the left-facing corner and long undercling that is just right of the Right Torpedo Tube. The initial section is poorly protected 5.9 or 5.10- leading into the short, obvious, hanging corner about 30 feet up. Place gear, then launch up and left into an impressive undercling. The jams are OK to start, but as you move left, the rock swings out from underneath the feet...just as the jamming and underclinging gets hardest...very out-of-balance stuff, pumpy too. The irony here is you will never have wanted to get into one of the Tubes as badly as you will when you are about to barndoor off into space at the crux. Once in the Right Tube, slither, flex, and curse on much easier climbing to the top. See the Left Tube for descent beta.

Protection

Wireds to something big for the upper part of the Right Tube. The last moves into The Tube are a bit exciting.

Photos [Hide ALL Photos]

#1. Right Parallel Space #2. Left Torpedo Tube #3. Right Torpedo Tube #4. Gravity's Rainbow

Comments [Hide ALL Comments]

Skip Harper

Gravity's Rainbow is No. 4 in the Beta Photo and is well described by Steve above. The arrow is where the pucker factor rises to hi levels prior to entering the Right Torpedo Tube (No. 3 in the Beta Photo). May 25, 2003

Rob Dillon
Tamarisk Clearing

I myself read Gravity's Rainbow on a long solo backpacking trip in the Escalante. For some reason, the only people I know who have actually slogged through this thing are climbers (Rob Brinkerhoff and Mike Bonnet, take a bow). Is this because only climbers read great works of literature, or because only climbers have this kind of time on their hands? Unfortunately, I have climbed exactly none of the routes named for this epic work-- the completely obscure Ray Jardine route in Tenaya Canyon, the curving 5.11 A1 in Little Cottonwood, or this one. If Mr. Levin finds the last moves here 'a bit exciting', then I quite possibly will never bag the Vedauwoo one either. In truth, there was much that was amusing, and epic, and bizarre, and perplexing about Pynchon's book, but little indeed that you'd call 'exciting'. A great name to borrow for curving granite arcs, but most of them seem to be tidy little short stories rather than soaring epics. You'd think wall climbers would find this title handy, if only for rainy weeks in the portaledge, but perhaps they're not so literate as the craggers. (Most seem rather the opposite, come to think of it) So the world awaits a Grade VI named for the Rainbow, although-- perhaps its time has passed? Today's encyclopedic sufferfest might more likely wear the name of Infinite Jest, a title passed on to me by Mike Bonnet after a discussion of our mutual wrangling over Gravity's Rainbow, and one, at 1076 pages, entirely befitting a big-wall ordeal. Fetishists of the beak and the haulbag, the gauntlet is thrown! Jul 26, 2004

Andrew Gram
Salt Lake City, UT

Finally a chance to comment on a Vedauwoo 5.11 ;)

I've read Gravity's Rainbow, which was a process as long and painful yet still somehow rewarding as a Vedauwoo offwidth.

The other great Gravity's Rainbow route I can think of is at Lost City at the Gunks - 5.12 I think? Jul 27, 2004

Andy Johnson

Don't forget the classic Gravity's Rainbow ice route in Ouray. Mar 13, 2005

Robert Joyce
Laramie

Anyone know the bolted line going straight up the slab from the start of Gravity's Rainbow? Sep 25, 2015

JNE	[Hide Comment] Old Brad Jackson project. THAT is the one that will do it for you ;) Sep 27, 2015

Steve Levin
Boulder, CO

5.11c

Apparently sent August 2015 by friend of Strappo and Crusher with the addition of a bolt down low, with permission from FA of GR. Sep 27, 2015

JNE	[Hide Comment] Slevin, just ruining all the fun.... Sep 28, 2015