Dragging On

Climb the wall on the north side of the Dragon Point gully. The route faces southwest, getting morning shade and afternoon sun. It is possible parts of this route have been done before, but who knows: nothing seemed to match the description of old, mystery routes such as Pilgrimage, etc. There's some amount of loose rock, ledges, and pricker bushes to climb through, but we mostly linked fun hand cracks on good stone. A lot of the climbing is well-protected, but note that there are some runout/dangerous bits above 1-2 sub-par anchors: PG-13 by Black standards; R anywhere else.

Pitch 1. Broken face climbing leads to a quality, open book corner—all hands and hard to see from the ground (5.9).

Pitch 2. Move the belay/third class up to an obvious splitter crack and climb hands to OW (5.9+). Belay on a ledge.

Pitch 3. A short, thin, face traverse down and left (5.10 PG13) gains a splitter handcrack/steep, hanging flake. Easier terrain on precarious blocks leads to small pegmatite alcove: belay there on an “okay” anchor. Other than the traverse, it’s not runout, but the whole flake feature and blocks above are somewhat suspect.

Pitch 4. Runout face climbing (5.8 R) above the pegmatite alcove leads to a right arching finger-hand crack (5.9). Belay on a ledge system, and then move the belay right to a steep, grey-colored, right-facing corner.

Pitch 5. Climb steep, thin hands up the corner to a ledge (5.10+).

Pitch 6. Continue (possibly link with pitch below) with fists/OW and hands up the corner to a ledge belay (5.10+).

Pitch 7. Ledgy climbing up the path of least resistance and a broken chimney system leads to a short, unprotected squeeze chimney (5.8 R) and mediocre anchor in poor rock. (Note: It may be possible to trend hard left instead, finishing on/near Dark Star.) 

Pitch 8. Tread carefully up the loose, pegmatite chimney—bad rock, poor gear, poor anchor below (5.9-5.10 R/X)—with some steep, better protected crux moves around huge chockstones once you’re higher up, finishing at a glad-to-done belay at the rim. 

Start a few hundred feet lower than the old tire in the Dragon Point gully and climb up to the Dragon Point Overlook. You can see most of the features from the top of Black Snake.

Small to #4-5.