Simmeron
Trad climber
Reno, NV
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Wow, I can't believe I'm the first to offer beta, but after seeing everyone on Shagadelic and nothing else, I think I can understand. This is a fun climb that seems to be overlooked due to its proximity to Shagadelic. We tried to get on that climb this past weekend but due to the slowness of the parties above we jumped on this route, which had absolutely noone on it. I give this route four stars for the first two pitches and two stars for the last two.
While plenty of slick knobs and hand jams abound on the first two pitches, its still a physical climb. I even got some chimney moves in surmounting the crux bulge. Basically, the beta is left foot in crack, right foot on knobs, hands in crack and keep moving on up. The lieback on the third pitch has dirty and flaky rock. It would be much cleaner if more people climbed the upper pitches, but due to how clean the first two pitches are I'd guess most people rap off after that.
The runout face on the third pitch seemed a little longer to me than what Supertopo calls "a rather short runout face" but for Tuolumne it was probably rather short. Nonetheless, it was easy climbing, but I wouldn't want to fall since you'd probably get ground up by all the knobs. The last pitch was extremely dirty with a 5-easy low angle runout to the top.
The physical/technical crux was surmounting the bulge on the first pitch, whereas the psychological crux was figuring out how far up the third pitch lieback you're going to go before you commit to the runout face. I went onto the face right as the lieback steepens up, and my climbing partner went to the end of the lieback before she went onto the face, which she said seemed harder than the way I went.
A fun route that is a great back-up if Shagadelic is too crowded. You just have to haul up the extra cams. We got by without a #5 cam (you can use it but it seems unneccesary) and only one #4. If you're not comfortable on sustained 5.7 offwidth/liebacking you'll probably want two #4's.
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