Spike It
5.9- YDS 5c French 17 Ewbanks VI UIAA 16 ZA HVS 4c British
Avg: 1.8 from 18 votes
Type: | Trad, 140 ft (42 m), 2 pitches |
FA: | Marcus Brown, 1993 |
Page Views: | 877 total · 5/month |
Shared By: | Matt Richardson on Aug 3, 2009 · Updates |
Admins: | Leo Paik, John McNamee, Frances Fierst, Aeon Aki, Mike Snyder, Taylor Spiegelberg, Jake Dickerson |
Description
The first pitch, while mostly straightforward, contains your standard Vedauwoo funk. Follow the double cracks up for some mellow climbing to a bulge containing a wide section just above the point. Here you can bust out your chicken wings and arm bars or just lay back the crack on some nice face holds (what I ended up doing) to surmount this obstacle. Then continue up the hand size crack to a big ledge just above another grassy ledge to the right.
For the second pitch, move the belay down and over about 10' to the aforementioned grassy ledge (if you don't you will potentially put a lot of stress on your system if the leader were to fall). Take the leftmost crack of the two cracks up from the ledge using mostly hands. About 20' up, the wall bulges and the crack pinches down to almost perfect fingers - this is what you came for. Clip the old pin (and probably back it up - a nut will do) and step up and into the crack - this is the crux. The crack eases up considerably above the bulge. Belay atop Blair I.
Location
Protection
Although from the bottom, this appears to be wide, I found that you could easily get away with a set of singles to a #3 Camalot C4 supplemented with a set of nuts. For the belay atop the first pitch, you could actually just wedge your body in to the crack behind the rocks if you had no gear available.
Belaying directly atop P2 needs large pieces (#3 and bigger), or wrapping one of the enormous boulders at the top. Alternatively, place a directional (#3?) at the top and move 20' climbers-right to a bolted rap anchor.
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