Hanging Gardens

An old aid line scrubbed with love by Kris Wild last year. Unfortunately, despite it being completed months before the publication of the new Select guide, it didn't make it in (for space reasons, I heard). Three pitches, each characterized by mostly straight-forward 5.8/5.9 crack climbing and distinct slabby crux sections that have a bolt at eye-level. If you aided each of the three bolts I'm sure it would go at 5.9 A0.

P1 (10-): Easy climbing up and left along some left-leaning crack systems. Mantle up into a no-hands rest, move up and left, then directly right underneath the bolt to some face moves. There's a positive water dimple you can get a few pads in, but my 5'6" girlfriend had a harder time than I did reaching it. Felt 5.10- to me, 5.hard for her. Mantle and scramble up and right to chain anchors below a handcrack.

P2 (10+): Left-facing corner. This is the reason you're climbing this route, because you love plugging gold Camalots in slammer hand cracks like a boss. Some great jamming for the first half, then a tricky traverse left past a bolt, then up a thinner crack up and right to chain anchors. This is the crux pitch, the traverse again was really hard for my short partner, she had to aid past the bolt.

P3 (10): Start up and right through some easy climbing up a low-angle dihedral, grab some jugs and clip the bolt. A technical section follows up and left through some shitty finger locks and pinches up to a mini-jug. Onwards and upwards through easier ground and then up through an offwidth (I used a #4 Camalot, but it looks like there are bolts to the right you could mess around with up some features if you don't have anything wide.) Up some face moves to chain anchors.

We rapped off (3 raps with a 60), but apparently you can walk to the left from the anchor and join up with the descent trail. I can't testify to how easy that is, it didn't look particularly well-trodden today.

Good fun, obviously a ton of work went into scrubbing this route. That being said, the combination of some larger trees up high (which need a chainsaw) and the low traffic due to not being so well advertised is leading to a slow buildup of pine needles and leaves in the cracks. This needs traffic so it doesn't get overgrown again before the new McLane guide, so go climb it as a public service to all.

You can read a trip report and check out some photos here: supertopo.com/tr/Hanging-Ga…

The first obvious route you see when walking along the Papoose approach trail. The p2 handcrack stands out and screams at you that it's being neglected and that you need to climb it.

SR from blue metolius to #4 Camalot, doubles from .5 to #2 were nice. Chain anchors.