Jim Erickson's 1980 guide calls Perilous Journey a "hyper-modern horror" and Rossiter calls it "Boulder's most famous mind control classic". What mind control, life is easy on a top rope. Today I still would not lead this fright fest. As a sport route Perilous Journey would check in with a lot of 5.11 edge climbing and probably fall in the middle zone of acceptable quality routes. There are hundreds of better sport routes in terms of continuous 5.11 climbing and nice movement on stone. The rough stuff on Perilous Journey comes at 25 to 30 ft off the deck and this why it was such an amazing test of mind control. I'm still not sure that you could get in more than a single #1 or #2 stopper, perhaps a brass nut if you had the time. Climbing after the flake is never harder than middle 5.10, but the gear is still really sparse. So why list Perilous Journey here? Because if you climb, you should do it just to see what was going through Breashears' head. Just run the top rope, unless you are feeling up to the mind control. To set up the TR, run P1 of The Red Dihedral (5.6) and jog right a few feet to get the gear. To bail off go back to the rap station at the top of TRD P1. What we have done is to run the TR on PJ and then head over to Mighty Mouse (5.12a) and all of its nice cozy bolts. This has always been an amusing contrast, a bit like weighing one's psyche in the balance.
I have never done this route. I do, however, have a question about the rating of both this and Krystal Klyr. Are they both .11b? Is one 11d and the other .11b? I'm only interested, because I think that these two routes are probably best done in the style they were first climbed in. To me, there's a bit of a difference between "b" and "d", and I'd just like to know. Maybe someday (10 years from now), I'll have the balls/ability/mind control to go after one of these babies from the ground up. Any help would be appreciated.
Well, I toproped this yesterday, and checked out the gear. Obviously, the initial few meters (what I thought to be the crux) is unprotectable. However, in the jug just before it kicks back to a slab there is a bomber cam (something like a black Metolius or white Alien). Above, in the handhold used to mantle onto the infamous edge, there is a money blue ball-nut. Of course, Breashears didn't have access to this kinda stuff for the first, but nowadays this thing is fairly reasonable.
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