[Hide Comment] This route allegedly benighted a young Joe Herbst early in his climbing career. Little is known about where the actual first ascent went up but it is believed to be close to what is described in the new Handren Guide.

The route was "rediscoved" by Larry and myself in 2006 and led to a flurry of new routes on the lower first creek slabs as well as the Labrynth wall above. Mar 12, 2008

[Hide Comment] Jim Arnold and I climbed this route Saturday. The wall was ours, the only other party nearby was on Rising Moons. We climbed with twin 60 meter 8 mm ropes. It is important to set stations in the correct places. We set anchors at the ledge and tree at top of p1 instead of up the ramp on the right. Traversing up the ramp and setting pro before starting up the face creating lots of drag on the system.

Stations are not obvious and I felt that anchors we set were often 25 feet below where they should have been but we simply would have run out of rope. Despite these little wrinkles, the upper pitches on the wall are excellent. The long face prior to the final dihedral is a brilliant combination of rust and green lichen at a moderate grade.

We hit the summit around 4 pm. It is difficult to tell how to get to the descent gully. We did a thrash up to where I could see the snag Karsten described as a landmark and found the gully down. One of the gullies does not have rappel anchors and looked too dicey to scramble down. For expediency sake we set anchors at two rappel points with sewn webbing and biners for a rappel. Our hope is that future parties will let the stations remain to aid other climbers in making a safe descent. Apr 8, 2008

[Hide Comment] To add a few things to Marc's summary. The climbing was generally very clean face climbing at a 5.4-5.5 grade. Gear can be had every 15 ft or more. The last pitch (the steeper crack) felt about 5.7 despite the recent guide supposedly saying it is 5.6.

Once on top we did thrash up from bushes etc until we found the dead snag and could easily climb up to the base of the upper wall. From there descend to the saddle. In the saddle is a large pine tree and a cairn makes the start of the descent. Down and right from the cairn a short ways is the first rappel (red sling off a small tree). A 200 ft rap leaves you at the second rap - red sling off a natural thread. Take this down another 200 ft. From there you can downclimb easily a short ways in an inset on the right. From there we set a new rap anchor off a wedged block with green sling. A 200 ft rap takes you down to the ledge with another rap anchor (blue sling off a tree). This new rap pulls pretty easily. Take the blue sling rap down another 200 ft or so. From here one can probably scramble down but since it was dark we set-up another rap off a dead tree that goes down 100-150 ft (over a fun hang and free rappel) and puts one on the terrace just to the right of Algae on Parade. This new rap also pulls quite easily.

This descent gully seems steeper and slicker than most and hopefully these 2 new raps will be deemed a worthy addition and left for future use.

Nice route, nice weather, and lots of fun. Apr 8, 2008

[Hide Comment] Good route.
Finding the start was not obvious.
After climbing the pocketed face (cl. 3 - and way easier than it first looks), head to the far left side of the bush-covered area and locate a clean ledge below the big corner (~20' below a small pine).
Climb the big corner ~30', then trend right along a featured slanting ramp. We belayed here, but next time will just simul-climb a bit in order to reach the good ledge 240' up.
Also, as you climb straight up from the slanting ramp near the start, stay left. (I ended up in the middle of the face and had some exciting 5.7 moves to get back to the left...).
After the good ledge near the left edge of the buttress, follow the crack. Maybe 450' of fun, easy, well-protected climbing.
We simul-climbed this crack and set up a belay at a small ledge just below a varnished headwall. It might have been better to just keep going the 50' to the brushy ledge where you will step over to the face to the right.
The next to last pitch is good face with limited pro. Stay right at the end and look for a short crack for the belay.
The last handcrack is good, but a bit lichen-covered. Well-protected 5.7.

The new rap stations are great! We did this with a single 60m and felt fine about the downclimbing. Apr 13, 2008

[Hide Comment] Climbed it this past weekend and had the route to ourselves. It was a very enjoyable climb. Most of the climbing is considerably easier than 5.7, but an inexperienced climber shouldn't take it lightly. The protection can be quite sparse in spots (more like 30' between placements) although the climbing is probably 5.4 in those sections.

The biggest challenge I experienced was finding an adequate belay station. On the third pitch from the top I ran out of rope (60 m) and ended up downclimbing 30' or so in search of a crack to establish a belay on the upper slab.

I should have paid more attention to the beta photo (1 of 10) on the first creek slabs page of MP identifying the belay locations before we did the climb! The belays are marked exactly where you want to be, and there aren't many other options on the lower and upper slab sections.

All in all it was a lot of fun. The route finding and limited protection in areas kept it exciting on the easier sections, and the final handcrack is great. May 4, 2012

[Hide Comment] The route goes climber's right of the descent route, the top of which is marked by the low point in the upper First Creek Slabs ramp system and also to the right by a distinctive bright red "chunky" (versus smooth) topped pillar. On the approach I came in from a red ramp system just below Romper Room (very dark varnished wall). The route starts around the corner from the Romper Room area. Photo of the start of the chimney pitch shared with Rising Moon:

mountainproject.com/images/…>

Mellow solo. You can easily escape near the top if you don't like the looks of the crux pitch. There is lichen on the final hand crack section but not enough to make it sketchy.

Neglected to bring beta on the raps, but they were very easy to locate. Nov 25, 2012

[Hide Comment] Climbed this on March 25th. One of my .75s walked and got two lobes stuck; my second was inexperienced in gear removal and was unable to retrieve it. We were taking longer than expected so I decided not to rap down to get the cam. Just a heads up since I bet it would be really easy to remove. You can get it as booty or contact me and I would pay shipping/a reward since it was fairly new and I only have one other cam in that size. Otherwise the route was pretty cool. Don't try to link the first two pitches unless you are good with some simul-climbing. I got into some pretty sketchy (for me) terrain a bit left of the route on what should have been the second pitch (30 ft above placement with bad rope drag and having to traverse off route on slopey hands and feet to make a ledge for the belay). The top hand crack was fun, but short and varied from fists to off-fingers. No need to bring extra hand sized pieces really. Also, most of this route went into shade in the early afternoon. Mar 30, 2014

[Hide Comment] This was a fun route - finding the start was a little tricky as it is very overgrown and does not appear to be very traveled. There may have been a better way to access the start but we scrambled up a 4th/5th class ramp with large pockets. The first pitch is easy but has really poor quality rock - I doubt protection would hold. We combined the first two pitches and ended up in a protected alcove. From here a sweet crack system goes up two pitches on a 70 m with excellent gear. A short pitch took us to a large ledge system with lots of brush. The next pitch has some of the poorest quality rock on the route - stay to the right on the buttress for better rock and some pro. We didn't find the perfect belay spot for the final pitch so we set up an anchor right before the hand crack. The hand crack is really, really short - I'd guess 40 feet max. It is very well protected using a variety of sizes of cams. From the top of the route it is a 200-300 foot scramble up more bushes to access the ramp system. There were good rap stations with new bolted anchors every 200 feet or so,accessed from the first low point of the ramp system as described in the descent options. Apr 1, 2014

[Hide Comment] Did this route the other day and found it to be a very fun, low stress outing. We used the first chimney pitch of "Rising Moons" as our approach to the base. Once at the base of the second pitch of "Rising Moons", we traversed mountain right on easy terrain to reach the base of the first pitch. This worked out nice on the descent which came out just around the corner to the east of Rising Moons.

All the climbing was very straight forward and IMHO far easier then the 5.7 rating which I believe would only apply to the last 25 feet of the final pitch hand crack. I thought the hand crack section had a couple of moves in the 5.7+ range and wouldn't argue with someone who thought those moves may be 5.8. With that said, the crack provides great protection and can be stitched up if you chose to do so.

I believe we missed a couple of the intended belay's, but always found spots to set up solid anchors. I posted some pictures, particularly of the descent anchors which seemed fairly easy to find and straight forward. We did the climb and descent with a single 70 and some mild down scrambling and that worked out great for us. Some of the down scrambling could be somewhat unnerving to someone who is newer to the game. Double ropes would probably alleviate that.

My partner and I had a super fun day on this climb with virtually no stress on a climb that doesn't seem to see a lot of traffic. Definitely worth doing in my opinion and I will probably go back for seconds at some point.

From the top of the climb, continue up to gain the main terrace. From there go mountain left toward a large isolated pine tree which is at the head of the descent gully. Scramble down to find the first rappel station. Mar 12, 2015

[Hide Comment] Good route, but be advised of a few things.

1. The steepest climbing you'll do is the unroped third-class approach to the start. Not an exaggeration.

2. Aside from the 5.7 corner at the very top of the route, there's not a single section of climbing that's harder than 5.4, and much of it is 4th class.

3. The gear is sparse, but the climbing is so easy that you never notice. Slings with slipknots are your friend on this one. We protected entire pitches with nothing but slung plates and chickenheads.

A fun adventure climb up some nice rock. Was a little bummed to see that the only really technical part of the route (the corner at the top) is kind of contrived. The whole thing can be avoided on easier ground to the left that is more in character with the previous 900 feet. Kind of made it feel like a 900 foot approach to a 30 foot 5.7 crack climb.

Lastly, in addition to the approach described by Fossana, the route can be approached as described by Handren, which is accomplished by climbing steep third class buckets on a black face of rock in a gully maybe 30 or 40 feet further up the canyon from the Rising Moons start. I've posted a picture of that with some info. If you haven't done the first pitch of Rising Moon, that's probably a cooler way to get to the base of Sunset Slab than this, which I think is the "standard" approach. Either way could be pretty easily third-classed. Apr 25, 2016

[Hide Comment] Anyone know if this descent is the same for Lady Luck? Has anyone been lucky enough to do it with one rope without a sketchy downclimb? I have descended both Algae on Parade and Lady Luck and have yet to figure out how to descend with 1 rope. If anyone has a detailed description i would appreciate it. Dec 9, 2016

[Hide Comment] Wanting to save the last pitch for when I do Lady Luck, we bailed climber's left at the top of pitch 5 [requires a bit of scrumming around some scrub oak and wandering up some 5.0 slab]. From the top you can see down into the gully, but it's an exposed downclimb. There is (as of April 2021) a 70m way to carefully (some loose rock) rappel down the gully. If you're comfortable at exposed scrambling/downclimbing, certainly there might be options to downclimb sections. I feel like the rappel situation in the gully could be improved, and a single 70m rope option easily (permanently) added. Pulling double ropes down this terrain increases the odds of snags/rope getting stuck in a crack/etc. IMHO

If you do attempt a single rope rappel, it's always advised to bring some extra slings or cord, and some rap rings or quick links. Or be willing to part with some of your rack. Apr 21, 2021

[Hide Comment] Pretty mediocre climb with the only fun climbing being the last pitch hand crack/corner. Would not do again although probably marred by the winds whipping through the canyon that felt like 2x strength of the wind forecast. Nov 18, 2021