Avg: 4 from 47
votes
Climb Comic Relief, but do all the harder variations which are:
P1, 5.10+. Climb the direct start (from the top of the pillar, take a thin crack zagging right with a small bush in it).
P4, 5.10. Climb the Black Dihedral variation (from the pitch 3 belay, head up the obvious, black dihedral, then traverse straight left).
P6, 5.11/11+. Climb the Lightning Bolt Cracks (the incredible zig-zagging thin hands crack off the ledge, you can't miss it).
Note: all variations start and end back on the original Comic Relief.
Use the same exact start location as Comic Relief. The description was taken from that route's page:
Descend SOB gully to a white, polished slabby area under the third prominent buttress on your left. Look for a prominent, left-angling feature low down (the "Vector Traverse" on Escape Artist) and a beautiful, thin, curving crack to the right of this. Head up the slab to a worn path leading to a 100 foot shoulder of broken rock. Scramble 4th and easy 5th Class up and right to a large block/flake and the bottom of the route. All pitch lengths are approximates, and like many routes here, optional belay points may be used.
A standard rack is fine. 3 x 0.75 C4s are nice for Lightning Bolt Crack.
Continue with onX Maps
Sign in with Facebook
cashmere wa
North Mitten
Western Slope
There's no 10+ pitch in the canyon you could really compare to the overhanging splitter majesty of LBC, but it's definitely a step up from the cruxes of Dark Star, Kachina, Checkboard, GWW, and Ghost Dancer. Personally I think it's a letter harder than Midsummer, so 11b feels right... but it's very hand-size and style-dependent. If you've paid your dues at the Creek like Fritz has and can cruise Ananaki, then maybe this will feel like 11-... but 10+ is absurd ;)
Regardless of grades, though, Comic 2.0 is easily one of the best routes I've ever done and probably my favorite in the canyon. Every pitch is 4 stars leading to LBC which is a true gem, and simul-climbing the second half is fun. We brought a #4, and I don't think it was necessary. Sep 13, 2020
North Mitten
Let's start with the assumption that Annunaki is most honestly graded at 5.11c. Giving it anything more than that is a tiresome regional anti-flex, wherein myopic Creek-only climbers are confronted with the startling necessity of pulling a face move without a cam in their face, and therefore upgrade the rating (Way Rambo, Sinestra, Tokyo Drift, Go Sparky Go). While calling Annunaki 5.12a will certainly score brownie points with the cute Access Fund baristas, it is neither accurate nor beneficial.
Compared to Annunaki, LBC is shorter, less steep, does not require thuggish cupped-hands jamming, features user-friendly gear placements and has excellent foot features for almost every move. Add locker one-size-fits-all finger constrictions, three hand jams and two bonafide jugs, and you have a very manageable pitch.
Per Ranger Vic, Ed Webster established LBC as the original Escape Artist line in 1982. He graded it flat 5.11 back then. Dare I contradict the master? I'd venture to say that had he been blessed with Totems, Z4s, and Katakis, and had he spent as much time sport climbing and sport-tradding as the average climber today, he would have called it 5.10d or 5.11a.
Compared to other Black pitches, LBC is:
- about the same as the 5.10d Scenic enduro crux and overhanging crux
- more straightforward than the boulder problem of Midsummer
- slightly harder than the money pitch steep 5.10 on Monkey
- not as sustained as the stout 5.10d crux of Checkerboard.
- easier and more straightforward than the 5.10d, thin dihedral on the OG Cruise.
- easier than the long 5.11b fingercrack on Atlantis
- significantly easier than the early 5.11c fingers on the direct start to Astrodog.
Also, compared to the 5.10d finger splitter on Questions and Answers in the Weep, I'd say it's comparable.
No sandbag here, I honestly think this pitch is 5.10d or 5.11a. Not that it really matters in the grand scheme of things -- no matter the grade, it's one of the best sixty feet of hard stone I've ever had the pleasure of climbing.
This episode of incendiarily unpopular climbing opinions has been made possible by viewers like you. Keep the Slope stout! Apr 21, 2022
Broomfield, CO