Super S

A very fun and adventurous outing up one of the most obvious lines on brass wall - the massive S crack that lies above vanishing point. For a climb that has been done few if any times, it overall has great rock quality and many memorable pitches. It brings you to a massive terrace high above brass wall where you can then continue your adventure to the top of bridge mountain. If you’re not up for this, there are three different decent options (in order of preferred to least preferred) - Raptor, Brass Balls, and Birdland.

Pitch 1 (5.9+) - When on the very right side of the ledge, look up and identify the obvious finger crack. The first pitch goes up the left leaning ramp and up the finger crack through a mini roof. Follow the finger crack up until you hit the large roof. Traverse left about 20 ft to the base of the roof. .75 and .5 help for protecting the traverse. Finger sizes or 3/4 can be used for the anchor.

Pitch 2 (5.9+) - Follow the hand crack through the roof, traversing left before heading up. Ends at a nice ledge. There is a nice ledge halfway through this pitch that can be used to split it up if desired.

Pitch 3 (5.8) - Pull a move off the ledge to get to a nice varnish face. Continue up easier terrain until you get to a ledge just before a varnished slot that leads to a vegetated ledge with a tree.

scramble about 200 feet climbers left until you are at the base of a nice varnished face. We did a few easy 5th class moves during the traverse but nothing was exposed.

Pitch 4 (5.8) - head straight up the varnished face. After the face continue heading upwards through the path of least resistance. End at a ledge at the start of a ridge.

scramble 100 ft of 3rd / easy 4th class to the top of the ridge. This leads to a ledge with a gully and another headwall. Downclimb into the gully.

Pitch 5 (5.fun) - there are a couple options here to climb a crack through a roof. We were debating them, but when we noticed there was a tunnel we could possibly use to bypass the roof we couldn’t resist. Climb up the slab and through the tunnel, then up easy terrain to another large ledge with a gully between you and the ridge to bridge mountain.

From here you have some options. If you wish to summit bridge mountain, see option one below. If you’ve had enough adventure for the day, see option two.

Option one:
Final scramble (5.tree) - climb into the gulley where the right tree is, and use the tree to climb out onto the rock face on the other side of the gully. Scramble up the face 100 feet or so to the massive ledge system. The easiest way to bridge point is via the gully system that comes from birdland. The gully directly above you also goes and eventually merges into this gully, but is a bit more adventurous. It has recently been pruned.

Option two:
Rather than scrambling into the gully by the right tree, scramble into the gully by the left tree. Start heading down the gully climbers left. It quickly becomes a beautiful slot canyon. After a couple hundred feet you will reach a point where you can go left down a side canyon, straight, or right. Going left leads to bolts that takes you to the top of the raptor decent. Going straight leads to the Brass Ball / Birdland decent. Raptor (left) is the quickest and preferred decent. The beta for this is as follows:

Raptor Decent
Once the canyon gets narrow, there is an anchor on the left face.
Rap 1: A short ~15m rappel gets you down to more 4th class scrambling.

Rap 2: After a few hundred feet of scrambling the canyon opens up and you reach an exposed ledge. There will be a bushy ledge on your left with a small cairn as of dec 1 2024. Traverse skiers left on this ledge to the anchors of the final pitch of Raptor. With a 70M rope this rappel ends 10 feet before a ledge with a single bolt backed up to a healthy tree. Do ~10 feet of non-exposed 4th class down climbing to get to this tree.

Rap 3 reaches a wide ledge with 2 bolts and tat. Exactly 35m to the ledge, tie knots.

Rap 4 goes slightly skiers right to a set of brown bolts. Exactly 35m to this anchor, tie knows.

Rap 5 goes straight down ~20M to the anchors of skydive.

Rap 6 goes to the ground

Brass Balls and Birdland decent
If you opt to decend via brass balls or birdland, go straight instead of left at the intersection mentioned above. After another 200 ft you will trend slightly left and go down into a large gully on your right. Do your best to stay out of the gully as long as possible (stay skiers left) to avoid bushwhacking. When you can't stay left anymore, get into the gully.
For the brass balls decent, continue down the gully.
For the birdland decent, traverse the right wall. When you peer around the corner from here you will see the anchors of the final pitch of birdland.

Historical Info:
I've gathered information that the first two pitches described here were climbed in 1986 by two folks named Mac from Denver and Dave from the UK. From here they wandered off right and thrashed down a gully. Interestingly a very old hard stem cam was found deep in the chimney of pitch 2, likely from them. This is the only known other ascent of these pitches. It is unknown whether pitches 3-5 were climbed prior to our ascent.

Starts on the right side of the ledge that alternative facts and varnishing fact ends on, near the top of super greens and table greens.

double to 3, single 4