Three Old Farts Young at Heart

The first pitch is dangerous, but is good climbing. The second pitch is popular as a direct variation to Psychosis. The third pitch is spectacular, but a little loose and grungy.

This is somewhere between 1 and 2 stars. The second pitch is very good. The first pitch could be popular with just one piece of decent gear for the 9 crux, but as is, it's a TR for most climbers. The third pitch is steep and airy, but with just a few moves of hard climbing.

See Psychosis for detailed approach info. Start about 10' right of Psychosis.

P1, 5.9vs: You won't hit the ground if you come off, but you could get pretty banged up. We top roped this pitch by leading P1 of Psychosis (10a) to the belay. Climb past some very loose flakes to below the ceiling. Climb the ceiling using a very thin flake on the face above and positive footholds. You can get some gear below the ceiling and perhaps a questionable micro cam a foot or so above the ceiling in the shallow dihedral. When your feet are a couple of moves above the lip you can get a decent microcam in the thin crack on the right. Another couple of moves gets you good gear. The rest of the pitch has adequate gear as you continue up an interesting right facing corner to join the top of P1 of Psycho.

P2, 10d: This is a sustained pitch with good gear. This was my second time leading this pitch. I'm thinking that there is no move harder than about 10a, but putting it together clean is tough. Climbing through the roof on the black rock is intimidating, because it's steep above and unclear where the next rest will be. Climb the crack directly above the belay to the ceiling at a short left-facing corner. A 3.5 Friend or #3 Camalot top ropes the move through the ceiling. Getting relaxed above the ceiling was the crux for me. Place a #2.5 Friend or #2/gold Camalot (hard to see, since you are right of the crack), and continue up steep but positive face climbing to a big ledge. Belay here with gear in the 3/4" to 2" range in the crack above the ledge.

P3: 10a: This pitch climbs the south face of the Psychosis pillar. Rossiter calls this S, but I don't think so. Don't do what we did which is to "step right around the corner" as per Rossiter. We ended up in the Pigeon Crack chimney, which we climbed via interesting stemming and not much gear to the top of the pillar. Instead, angle up and a bit right from the belay. Climb the small ceiling and up the center of the face to the first bolt. Continue up to a shallow right facing corner. Get decent gear and move left and up on big incut and fun huecos. A good cam protects a moderate move left. Lesser gear protects a 9ish move to the second bolt. At the second bolt pull up and finger traverse left (crux) to the arete. Chuck pulled two holds off the arete on the lead, falling both times. These disappearing holds may have been due to all the recent rain. Easy low angle rock leads to the top just right of the Psycho finish.

Descend via the Vertigo rap route.

Link-ups: You can easily connect P1 of [Psychosis] (or P1 of Old Farts should you choose to lead it) and P2. You could also link P2 and P3. With a long enough rope you may be able to link all 3 pitches, since the line is pretty straight. My recommendation would be to climb P1 of [Psychosis] and TR P1 of Old Farts. Then climb P2 and the first part of P3 to the first bolt and then traverse right a little higher to a big, comfy belay with a good view of the last pitch. Then do the last pitch by traversing back left above the first bolt (as we did, after mistakenly climbing upper Pigeon Crack).

Standard rack from microcams to 3.5 Friend or #3/Blue Camalot. Single set of nuts. There are two newly-replaced bolts on the last pitch.