(Open Project) Rake at the Gates of Hell Project

If this isn’t the king line at the Garden, it’s definitely in competition with the Repose of Souls Project. The line can be broken into two distinct sections which can be divided into two pitches or one, two-roped pitch:

P1: This follows the incredibly thin, very steep dihedral about ten feet to the right of the first few bolts of Repose of Souls. Like much of the granite at the garden, the dihedral pitch seems to be made of much finer-grained granite, which makes the climbing a lot more technical than most of the stuff at Culp. There are two fairly good holds in the dihedral itself and a few very thin ones along with a couple small face holds, but much of the movement involves very difficult smearing and stemming akin to what one might find in Yosemite or Squamish. From the dihedral, a hard throw to a set of liebacking moves on bad crimps takes you to a traverse on okay holds. From the traverse, mantle onto a large flat ledge which takes you around a corner. The ledge is really big and it’s protected by a two bolt belay. The belay is bolted so that you don’t have to do the second half while wrecking your rope around the corner. This pitch is probably anywhere between 5.12+ and mid 5.13.

P2: This pitch climbs the main line of weakness along the south face of the Garden and is quite similar in movement and angle to Repose of Souls, but all the holds are much thinner with far worse feet. The pitch is somewhat similar in style to Repose but likely a few letter grades harder than it. The holds in the line of weakness are all pretty bomber, just at quite a bad angle, which is around forty degrees. The lack of feet means there’s less straight up liebacking and much more powerful finger moves with higher, smaller feet. 

The anchor as of now is set further back from the lip than I would’ve liked, but which was necessary to access the fact without tumbling to my doom. I am planning on adding a second bolt adjacent to the final bolt to make a two bolt anchor with rings, I unfortunately ran out of bolts this trip but if anyone wants to add one themselves, they’re welcome to! 

This starts on the obvious dihedral at the base of the Garden of Earthly Delights then moves climber’s right around the southwest corner onto the south face. See location of the Garden itself in the location description.

10 bolts