Killer Whale 

Poor bolting job on the anchors of this route makes top-roping this route questionable. The sheath of one of the bolts is exposed and sliding out and the other one is spinning. Use your judgement when climbing this route, the potential for anchor failure is high.

This route is definitely not worth doing. Questionable rock quality down low, poor bolting, and an unaesthetic short line lead to an unmemorable experience. This is a route that is not worth defacing the rock with bolts.

There's nothing wrong with this route. It packs a lot of climbing in a short distance. It's a bit stif for 5.10, though, I'd give it .10d or 11a. The anchors the top are also in a fine place. If there are too low for people to walk to the top and set up a top rope, maybe they should try leading it, it's a sprot route for Christ sake!

The bolting job would keep me from leading this one, but toproping it was no problem. The anchors are fine (as of late 2006) and they were easy to get to. I thought the moves were really fun and the crux took a little thought as well as power. The rock all seemed fine. I'd put it at the harder end of 5.10. It's short but well worth doing.

There are two sets of anchors to the left of this route, which I felt don't deserve their own separate route descriptions, but people might like to know about them. The anchors are bolts with rings (no chains). They sit too far below the lip to access easily from on top of North Fin, but if you climb Killer Whale, it is easy to traverse over to TR the next one, then do the same after that for the leftmost route. The righthand one is mostly 5.8 with a move or two of 5.10 near the top. Nothing too memorable but fun if you're just having a day of TR'ing. The left one is worth doing. Fun moves lead to a little harder bit at the end, around 5.9. Unfortunately it ends just as it gets really fun--if it had another 20 feet of the same it'd be great.

I leave it to you to figure out how to clean one climb and move the anchors to another without doing anything stupid. I mention this because I saw some pretty questionable toproping practices at North Fin today.

Hey, those are two short trad routes and both are worth doing and memorable if you lead them. You need to know how to place gear though.

Attentive belayer recommended for this one! The rock appears too have cleaned up well since it was put up.

Toproping this route can be a little challenging since the anchors are low. I would recommend climbing the boulders/chimney to the right of the arete to set a TR. The climbing is 5.4ish until you reach the last bolt on Killer Whale. Here you can clip in and then lead the last stretch to the anchors (5.8+).

Killer whale is a stiff 5.10 and there were a couple times I was thankful that I didn't decide to lead it. The rock is very tough on the fingers.

This route is 5.10+ or 5.11-. Calling it 5.10b is going to get a newbie 5.10 climber hurt trying to on site it.
Check the egos at the parking lot and rate a route what it is!
Sandbagging is just as silly as over rating a climb.
This route is harder than Five O'clock Shadow which is consensus 5.10+.
Of course if all your ever doing is top roping, the rating is irrelevant safety wise.

If you fall straight down from near the last bolt there's a decent chance you could land on your belayer, or, if you miss him and he gets pulled up, on the ground. I think falling while pulling up any slack to clip would be a guaranteed grounder. Anyway, not what you'd expect from falling near a fourth bolt.

If you fall, better to shoot for climber's left and a get a couple of extra feet of air from the downhill grade.

There's a decent and safe stance from which to clip that bolt if it's already got a draw on it and you're fairly tall. I'm 5'8 and had to get scarily close to it before I could put a draw through it.

All in all, if you're gonna lead it and it's close to your limit, I'd recommend rapping in and putting all the draws in first, including an extra long one for the last bolt.

It felt like 11a to me but I was laying the draws so maybe 10+ with the draws in?

Don't crank too hard on the flexing flake midway up. Yes, I'm aware of the pulling "down" rather than "out" rule of thumb...but this one becomes a sidepull as you move past it.
Sketchy lead - I probably wouldn't do it again. Harder than 5 O'clock Shadow, and not bolted as safely.

very poor bolt placement on this route. i took a fall from above the 3rd bolt and ended up 4 feet from the ground--even though my belayer was fully attentive and did his job about as well as he could have. on a sport route you shouldn't have to worry about hitting the deck, especially after clipping the 2nd bolt. either the 4th bolt is too high or the 3rd bolt is too low, take your pick--but this route certainly is not worth leading unless 10+/11- is trivial for you.

it would probably be fun to toprope but after taking that fall and realizing i would have hit the deck if i had climbed a couple of feet higher i was kind of turned off to it. if you're going to bolt a sport route then do it safely. otherwise don't do it at all.

EDIT
i should have known. the hint is in the name. this thing is a man-eater.

I think this is a cool climb! My friend and teammate Alex Toth redpointed it today on lead as his first 5.10 on Mount Lemmon! I would say 10c is spot on. I grabbed my rack... aside from a short stretch near the hollow flakes this thing takes great gear all the way. Didn't clip any bolts except the top anchors. Protection hint: look for a small pocket/pod 2 or 3 feet left from the clipping jug for bolt #3, I used a red C3 in there, but it seemed wide enough to take an equivalent TCU/Mastercam/etc. A great way to do this fun little gymnastic climb!


Also, the left short trad route was really cool as well, I would give it 9+ or 10-, take your pick. The movement was really interesting up the clean corner at the top.