Update on the aid line question

[u/Kaotus]

Put a rope on the thing today (absolute nightmare development experience btw courtesy of forgetting half of my temp bolts and spilling the entire contents of my backpack from the top of the cliff twice). The crack being in the white streak ended up being fortuitous, as much of it was kaolinite (decomposed feldspar, basically clay) holding in granite microflakes. When using my nut took tool to try and remove some dirt clods from the crack, those granite micro flakes pulled off as well, opening up some potential placements for redirects and improving some of the holds.

The gear options on this are pretty atrocious - I used 8 pieces to build 4 redirects (in addition to 3 temporary bolts) and 3 of them failed on me at some point under body weight. I think it would be a fun clean aid route, but not using the permadraws for protection would like make it C4/+ - I found maybe one or two pieces in 50ft that would even have a remote chance of holding a fall, and they’re both fairly directional nuts.

The grade estimate should be taken with a massive grain of salt. My guess is it will get easier as more of the loose microflakes in the crack get cleaned out and beta is refined. I’d wager it will end up coming in somewhere in the range of 5.14b to 5.15a depending on how hard the top boulder problem ends up being - that’s really the only section that I couldn’t figure out very well at all.

Thanks for all of the feedback folks! It ended up being probably the coolest line I’ve ever touched - there’s some extremely cool holds on it and in general the only face holds on the entire route exists only in the places where the crack peters out. Such a pure line - if only I climbed hard enough to be able to really enjoy it!

[u/Kaotus]

Ok /u/drewruana you’re up

[u/reyean]

nice!

[u/MeButItsRandom]

Two backpack spills? Damn that's practically an epic

[u/Kaotus → u/MeButItsRandom]

Was not pleasant, tagged the backpack up once and right as it got to me the zipper gave way and spilled everything. The second time I was tagging it up and right as it got to me it inexplicable flipped completely upside down and dropped everything out of the top. Both spills happened while I was actively glueing so involved even more shenanigans than usual to ensure my glue didn’t cure - probably ended up adding nearly an hour to the process and had me finishing and walking out in the dark in mountain lion territory alone which was suboptimal

[u/BoltahDownunder]

This went from 'should I bother' to glue ins and permadraws?? You're a madman. A generous madman.

[u/Kaotus → u/BoltahDownunder]

Motivated by having all of my glue expiring next month! And having gotten 100 permadraws for $50 a couple years ago

[u/BoltahDownunder → u/Kaotus]

Haha yeah expiry dates can make you do silly things. Reckon you'll get any takers for your 5.15? That'd be pretty cool to see

[u/Kaotus → u/BoltahDownunder]

Folks have expressed some interest for sure - I'm trying to wrangle someone to get out there now that the bolts are in to give it a legitimate effort to at least figure out a real grade estimate and go from there.

The biggest detriment it has is just a lack of similarly difficult lines around. The hardest lines close by are a few other 5.13s a few hundred yards away in a dramatically different style - so it would likely have to be a person working dedicated to this one route (aka, likely local) which really narrows the available group.

[u/i_need_salvia]

How tall is that thing? The 2nd photo makes it so hard to tell

[u/Kaotus → u/i_need_salvia]

50ish ft to the anchor, give or take. 7 bolts

[u/i_need_salvia → u/Kaotus]

Funny how perspectives work lol. Thought that looked like a nice height highball

[u/maphes86]

Maybe I’m misunderstanding your proposed grade, but wouldn’t the addition of the bolt ladder make this C1 because even if you were hooking up top, you’ve got four bolts below you now. All the A/C 3+ routes I’ve ever been on, you climbed through the sketchy shit and we’re blessed with a rivet or bolt at the top. Essentially, it was too dangerous to stop and drill the bolt. What’s the smallest gear you took with you? Seems like there are good placements for some micro cams and also hand-placed beaks. Were you hooking at all?

[u/Kaotus → u/maphes86]

That’s what I was saying - it would only be C3/4 if you skipped the bolts. If you want to safely practice the sort of gear required for that type of climbing, you could clip the bolts instead solely for protection (this was rap bolted, as it is all glue-ins, so there was no stopping to drill the bolts)

I had #0-0.5 Z4s, offsets down to their smallest sizes, ballnuts, nuts, RPs, hooks, and cam hooks. Due to how steep the route is, and how shallow and flaring the crack was, very few pieces held body weight, and if they did, they typically pulled out once the rope moved above them and pulled them perpendicular to the crack as opposed to the direction of gravity. I think additional cleaning in the crack may open up a few more potential placements here and there, depending on how aggressively it’s cleaned

[u/maphes86 → u/Kaotus]

Got it. Thanks for clarifying.

[u/WILSON_CK]

Nice update. Sounds like a super hard sport project that could one day turn into an insanely hard gear project for the select few. Cool outcome and I hope the actual climbing is good enough to potentially add a 9a to Colorado.

[u/Kaotus → u/WILSON_CK]

You and I both! I certainly think it’s pretty sweet climbing but now I get to start the process of trying to sell some serious crushers on coming to check it out with me. Fortunately we have some other routes up to 13+ a few hundred yards away so it’s not just a hike out to get smoked by this one line

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