Joyless

I made this page so you don’t climb this route. Please climb Joy, I hear it is a great time and you get the same amazing view. If you accidentally choose the wrong dihedral, this page is here to help you.

Joyless is runout, dangerous, with poor protection and blocks the size of your head that can easy pull free from a cam or a foot.

CLIMB

Climb the first SUPER OBVIOUS dihedral up from the scree. This is the one that extends 200 ft up from the slab. Climb the first few hundred feet of 3rd and then rope up for 2-3 long pitches until to reach a bolt at a break in the dihedral.

Do not continue dihedral proper to the right. It is even more runout! Holds and pro disappear from the dihedral making it a pure slab climb. Unable to build an anchor I had to down climb 150 ft of slab going this way accidentally. Instead, go up the break and join another dihedral to the left.

Continuing up this next dihedral the climbing is pretty good 5.6 for a 100m. Then the dihedral curves into a ‘roof’. You must traverse under this roof on a dirty slab. Pro is sparse and poor as you go through this section and then up along the dihedral.

Be very careful about what you touch with feet as you near the top of the dihedral where it meets the ridge. A lot of larger stuff is loose and I knocked down a hunk of rock the size of my head down on my belayer here. Another party also did so and injured the belayer badly enough that they had to bail from this point.

The dihedral will now intersect with the ridge. Looking around the ridge you will see a steep gulley. You will likely want to set up belay somewhere here before continuing.

Look around the corner of the ridge for a bolt and work an airy traverse above the steep gulley. There will be a piton a little afterwards until you traverse up and right into a scree / dirty alcove. From here choose a route up the steep, overhangy holds to regain the top of the ridge. I ended the climb with a left hand in the left crack to provide protection and some stability.

After the steep wall you’ll can climb up easy stuff to the top of the ridge. Looking over can look over to see its a knife edge going up the ridge with one side being a wide slab. Instead, take the scree trail ‘climber’s right’ along the ridge. This section has high fall risk but can be easily simul-climbed or unroped.

DESCENT

Join the descent ridge and take the third gulley down. Its the right gulley when it looks dirtier than scree. Scree-ski down and reverse trail.

Hike across the dam and follow the main hikers trail that parallels he lake. Do not go up past the bear closure sign on the summit trail. The approach trail is pretty flat all the way to the scree slope when the route becomes very apparent. Don't follow any smaller offshoot trails that head downhill to the lakeshore, just follow the signs with hiker symbols on them. It's pretty straightforward. 25 minutes to scree slope from car. Head up the scree to the base of the route.

Most of the pro you think you can place will pull when you check your gear. Its best to start looking to build an anchor within the last 10m of your rope as its extremely difficult to find three pieces of good gear for an anchor. Very few I built would I want to take a lead fall.

Due to the poor quality and quality of pro this climb will have regular 40 ft runouts. I might have spent just as much looking / placing pro as climbing.

Standard double rack with small nuts will provide you this flexibility.