Pandemonium Palace

I was looking for more routes to do on the Perch and came across this route in the black book of topos at the Elephant's Perch (store) in Ketchum.  The rock is more dark and licheny on this side of the wall, but still very solid.  Despite very little traffic, this route still is a fantastic varied climb up a unique part of the wall.

We approached via the slabs, left of where the big tree and ledge are; i would not recommend this.  It took a while and was not efficient.  When we finally got to the base of the route, it looked as though there was a big right facing dihedral that seemed to be the most direct way of getting to the base.  I didn't climb it or stand under it, so I can't comment too much about it.  

I separated the pitches into I would recommend others to link/combine them.  I used the pitch numbers from the topo in the description below, but I would recommend people to do it in either 4 or 5 pitches.  

p1: (5.9) hands in a left facing corner and then unprotected 5.9 chimney climbing to a decent stance.  The topo shows belaying up near the bolts on the 2nd pitch, but I opted to set the belay in the crack system to the right, atop the squeeze chimney and about 25 ft below the bolts.  This way, you can save your 3's and 4's for the next pitch and not use them for the belay.

p2&3: (5.11) follow the left arching hand and fist crack up to two bolts.  The first bolt is good, the second is not.  Maneuver the awkward OW section (crux) until you can place a 4 above your head and layback the crack.  Pull one more set of hard moves to get back in the corner and then follow the crack all the way under the roof. The rock is not good under the roof, so if i were to do it again I would just link into the next pitch (5.9 3rd pitch on the topo) all the way to the bolted belay.  The bolts are garbage, so you can just build a gear belay in the crack.  This belay kinda sucks, but at least the rock is good.  

p4&5 : (5.10+) climb the crack above and then traverse left on ledges until you get to a mini roof.  place a piece and face climb on sloping edges to another big ledge.  This is where the topo states the pitch ends, but it made more sense to me to just link into the next pitch.  Go left a little bit more until you get to a roof with a tree under it, and go out the mini roof, up the crack, to a nice and big ledge.  

p6&7: (5.9 R) go directly right off of the belay without any gear and make some 5.7 face moves up a shallow left facing corner.  Get to a nice ledge (where the top of p6 is on the topo) and place a couple pieces at your feet and commit to some real slab moves.  YOu definitely do not want to fall here.  Clip a shitty bolt, do some more moves, clip one more shitty bolt, follow some big pockets where you can put some gear, and then finally follow a dirty left facing corner to a nice ledge.  You can either stop here, or climb 60 more feet of easy crack to the top.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with how varied of a climb this was: squeeze chimney, offwidth, cracks of all sizes, face climbing, slab climbing.  It probably isn't as quality as the rest of the climbs on the Perch, but if you're looking for a little adventure, it is totally worthwhile!  More traffic would only make it better.  

One more thing to note: there are a total of 6 bolts (4 normal bolts and 2 belay bolts) on the climb; 5 are horrible and shouldn't be trusted.  One is good, as mentioned above.  

The far left side of the Elephant's Perch.  It can approached two ways; 1) from the lakes, go up as you would for the main routes (Fine line, mountaineer's, etc.) and then continue further left via some 5th class scrambling towards Splitberger-March direct. 2) from the approach trail, cut up and left early near the talus field to avoid having to go all the way up to the lakes and then back to the left.  Either way, you're aiming for a big right facing dihedral.  This is an approach pitch to get up to the big ledge with the huge whitebark pine, where the route officially starts.  

Double rack from 0.2 - 4, three 3's are helpful for the crux pitch; single set of small nuts