Masquerade

The highlight of North Bubble, and one of the best 5.10s in the park. Masquerade climbs the spectacular granite shield on the left side of the crag.

The climb begins with a committing runout to your first pro. The guidebook calls this 5.9 R/X, but we found the movement to feel closer to 5.7. Still, it’s about 30 feet of unprotected climbing. Scramble up on onto a ledge and pull on a vertical series of flakes and jugs to a long horizontal crack, where you can get an excellent hand sized cam. The climbing is all secure on large, positive holds, so just breathe through it and keep moving. Continue following big jugs to the first bolt. From here the wall starts to gently overhang, and there is seemingly always a great jug where you need it. Excellent movement past bolts with supplemental gear in horizontals leads through the overhang to a slab. Here the climbing thins out and gets a little more footwork intensive, but similar to the climbing below, there seems to always be a great crimp right where you need it. Join a short, flaring hand crack near the top of the wall and mantle a nice ledge with a crack in a corner that takes finger sized gear. Belay from a gear anchor.

Descent: 

From the gear anchor, you can lower back to the ground with a 70m rope, if you and your partner both want to lead it. But then there comes the pesky issue of how to get your gear back. It’s best to have someone follow the pitch, and then do another short pitch to the trees above. Walk out right on the ledge and follow easy 5th moves up to a tree that’s much further back than you’d like. Rappel from the tree down and climbers right to a ledge with another tree, this one sporting some tat. Rappel again to the ground. 

The leftmost bolted route at the crag.  A large tree obscures your view of the climb slightly, but look for the line of bolts on the upper wall. This route is easily identified since it’s the only route with more than one bolt on it at the crag. 

5 bolts and a single rack to #2, save some finger sized gear for the gear anchor at the top.