Mountaineer's Route 

Always got a kick out of the commentary on that route topo.

Great route! Picked a wrong crack on topo's pitch 6 (went too far left for whatever reason).

At the risk of looking like an idiot, I'll mention that the Mountaineer's Route is on the West face, about a 10 minute hike left from likely bivy locations. Seagull and Lost Horizons are directly above the bivy and start with a left leaning gully with chockstone topped by a triple tiered roof -- just like Mountaineer's Route. From the large number of bail anchors we found on these routes, others have made the same mistake while aiming for Mountaineer's Route.

If you do this one first your impression of climbs on the EP will be a little skewed. The route is on good but not great rock, and the rating is a bit soft. The other climbs that I did feature great rock and stiff ratings.

Watch your rope around the tiered roofs on p4. Very easy to get profanity-inducing rope drag here! I would recommend either back cleaning everything till you get to the arete which has great pro or extending the third pitch to the arete and belaying there. This is a very fun climb on mostly good rock.

Great route. I have taken my kids up this - yes not as good as the other routes but a classic moderate. The final fat crack slows down the beginners but the rest is easy for most climbers.

Just lead this route two weeks ago. Lead every pitch. The route is mostly 5.5 and lower, with occasional sections of harder terrain. An excellent route for the new 5.9 leader. Keep in mind though, this route will not prepare you one bit for other routes on this rock.

If you are a 5.10 climber and are doing this one as a warmup for the other routes, I highly recommend the wafer of woe pitch on "chasing the dragon" to avoid the two gully pitches on mountaineers. Stellar flake and hand crack climbing. This one is a cruiser route, really fun overall.

Climbed this route 8/7/12 and loved it. My first alpine experience and I appreciated the perfect hand jams on the last twenty feet of the 7th pitch. Great route. Awesome rock.

I second Stan on the pitch 4 comment. If you don't back clean, I recommend putting a cam up as high as you can in the roofs and clipping the rope directly in. I mistakenly extended that piece with a runner which allowed the rope to sink to low and catch the flake when I took out slack at the top. It is also nearly impossible (impossible in our case) to communicate from the top of pitch 4 to the belayer. Another good reason to extend pitch 3 to the arete.

Fun climbing, and for "the worst rock on the Perch", the rock is still pretty darn excellent. The first two pitches are sort of ho-hum, but the rest of the route is all 4 star. Next time I'll try the alternate start.

We were able to link pitches 3 & 4, and 6 & 7 using a 70m rope. We could have linked 1 & 2 also, but the rope drag would have been heinous. If linking 3 and 4, be careful to either not protect, or protect and backclean under the roof, unless you like rope drag. I clipped the bolt at the hanging belay with a double length runner, didn't protect again until around the arete, and didn't have problem with rope drag.