Mirage Direct Finish

This is a direct finish to Mirage with some cool steep/overhanging terrain.

Warning: Climbing at Laurel Knob is extremely dangerous due to long runouts, poor protection, difficult route finding, rappel descents, and other factors. The information in this posting is provided for informational and historical purposes only to aid in understanding roughly where the route has been climbed before. Information provided is approximate, subjective, and based upon sometimes vague memories and opinions of recreational climber(s) that may not have been recorded until long after climbing the route. As such, the information is unverified and may be inaccurate, incomplete, and/or misleading. Any person(s) attempting to climb this route or any others does so at their own risk and is solely responsible for their party's safety using their own route-finding skills and judgement and shall not rely on any information in this posting. Bolts and fixed anchors left in place on the route were placed so as to protect the first ascent party (often placed from strenuous stances while drilling on lead in traditional style), but it is neither claimed nor implied that such anchors as well as removable protection placement locations are safe or suitable to protect further ascents. It is the responsibility of climbers to practice redundancy in anchoring and thoroughly inspect bolts/fixed anchors before deciding to use them. All pitch lengths where given are rough guesses from climbing the route and must not be relied upon for any purpose.

Pitch A (starts after P3 of Mirage): Climb overhanging orange corner with gear to a jug on the overhanging wall. Clip a bolt then make bouldery thin face moves left to get established in deep water groove. Climb the usually wet groove past 3 more bolts to 2 bolt anchor. (5.12b, 90 feet). The crux is mandatory free climbing. It took me a lot of whippers to finally get these moves and make it over to the groove on the FA.

Pitch B: Climb face right of groove past some gear to ledgy area then continue up to a bolt in a bulge and make bouldery moves to get established over the bulge and into the much easier groove to the left. Continue to belay at one bolt and gear in a pod (#1 and #2 camalots and possibly tricams)(I did not put in this bolt and have no idea what route it is part of) (5.12a, 120 feet)

From here one can traverse left to anchors of permission granite or fathom direct to rappel or one can join up with one of the alternate finishes to fathom above (See topos in guidebook). 

Note that Both pitches were pinkpointed on the FFA

This direct finish starts from the top of pitch 3 of Mirage. The direct finish goes straight through the headwall above the "upper oasis" feature instead of going out right to lower angled terrain as the standard finish of Mirage does. To avoid water seepage on P1-P3 of Mirage as is usually present, it is possible to climb a variation coming in from the Oasis route, and a runout variation of P3 of Mirage somewhere on the dryer steep face below the crux roof is also possible. Mirage direct finish was climbed with the groove wet on the FA and FFA after climbing the aforementioned dryer variations coming in from Oasis route. I do not have any good beta on the exact locations of such dryer variations for getting to the P3 anchor of Mirage, and scoping out after climbing another route such as P1-P3 of Mirage would probably be a good idea before attempting.

As with most routes, the "GPS" in the route heading was automatically carried over from the parent area and at the time of this update does not reflect the actual route coordinates which I do not know.

For the two pitches of this direct finish, I used a rack of nuts, tricams (likely up to #2), and cams from tiny to #2 camalot including hybrid aliens. After the 2nd bolt on pitch A, there may be a critical brown / #1.5 tricam placement. Others may want to bring more gear and additional gear is likely needed to climb pitches above/below.

There are long runouts on easier terrain.