Heart of Darkness

After just a few ascents to clean this thing up it will be a serious contender for a 4 star route! It has beautiful splitters, continuous and engaging yet varied climbing, amazing (mostly bolted) belays, memorable sequences, exposure, position, etc etc etc.

P1- 150' 5.9 Scramble up major right-facing corner near center of the mountain. Gain and climb up a shallor right-facing corner to a thin hand crack. Step right after ledge and climb right-facing flakes up to a good ledge. Step right for bolted anchor.

P2- 200' 5.10- Climb the groove on the right, eventually stepping right and climbing over blocky features aiming for the base of the giant dihedral (the bottom of a heart-shaped feature capped by giant roofs). Climb cracks on the left face to reach a small ledge with another bolted anchor.

P3- 100' 5.10 Stem and jam your way up the steep awesome splitters until you are in an alcove under large roofs. Reach out into space and make an absolutely bonkers mantle onto a diving-board feature. Bolted belay here.

P4- 160' 5.11- stem up the steep corner through overhangs to gain a very long beautiful crack. Climb through tons of awesome fingers and hands with an occasional fist jam. At the very top it becomes offwidth for several moves before ending on the giant Throne Room Ledge. The FA party did not bring anything bigger than a #4 and felt fine about it, but big cams might be a good recommendation. Bolted anchor.

At this point there are numerous options to the top. Although it's not what we ended up doing, at this time we recommend either going straight up the splitter above you or moving left about 20 feet to climb easier terrain to the next ledge system up. From here traverse far right w/ downclimb to join the excellent finish to North Buttress.

Other options are to join Silver Cloud or Northeast Buttress. The FA party joined Silver Cloud for most of a pitch then established a new long 5.10 physical crack to gain an awesome ledge with stellar position high atop the final headwall. Unfortunately, the rock on this beautiful pitch was of lower quality and had the kitty litter inside. With traffic it could clean up to make an awesome finish. There is a 5.10+ R traverse off the right side of the ledge  and around the corner to top out the mountain. We would not be offended if anyone added a bolt or two here.

Merriam has a N butt toe and a NE butt toe. Start on the inside (right) of the NE butt.