This surprisingly good route goes up the left edge of the Community Pillar. The left margin of this prominent central feature on the north face of Magic Mountain is a dark chimney halfway up. This is the Honeycomb Chimney and is the main landmark of this route. Start at the far left side of the broad base of the buttress.
Pitch 1: A short pitch leads through some fragile rock and a chimney to a good belay ledge beneath a dark offwidth crack.
Pitch 2: Start up the wide crack, but exit right onto easy face climbing up solid varnished potholes. Move back to the crack and pull over a small bulge (5.7) to an easy chimney. (If you don't have a 60-meter rope, you should probably belay at the bulge.)
Pitch 3: Class 3 climbing leads up the broken gully to the base of a huge dark chimney.
Pitch 4: High quality climbing on the varnished honeycomb takes you to the top of the chimney. (5.7)
Pich 5: Climb up and slightly left to the constricted slot above you. A bit of fiddling with large cams in pockets gives some amount of protection for the squeeze moves (5.8) through the slot. Continue up and left on easy rock, belaying just above a small tunnel.
Pitch 6: Class 4 scrambling leads left and a little down for about 100 feet across a broken ledge system.
Pitch 7: Climb the spectacular corner (5.9) to a large ledge.
At this point you can descend by walking right (west) and joining the standard Community Pillar descent where it rappels from the pine tree. Alternatively, you can climb another pitch:
Pitch 8: Scramble up for 50 feet (class 3) over loose rock to the base of a small but clean corner. Go straight up the crack (5.7) and through the chimney in the giant split boulder to a belay on the summit ridge.
The descent from here does not involve any rappels, but it is not trivial (and probably not recommended in the darkness). Turn left (east), and work along the right (southern) side of the ridge, following a path of least resistance through the rocks and brush. Work your way up until almost at the true summit of Magic Mountain (a summit cairn is visible), then descend to the south. Hug the cliff face on your left until you finally emerge at the small saddle where the normal descent from Olive Oil starts. Follow the Olive Oil descent down the gully to the east until reaching the trail.
This is a fine route. Pitch 7 is a classic corner, (which kicked my butt). Aside from some loose stuff at the begining of the first pitch this route features good quality rock throughout. The descent is a little rough. Don't wear shorts and short sleeves unless you enjoy getting scraped up. This route was in the shade all day. Thanks for taking me along Larry.
pitch 4 and 7 make this climb!pitch 7 is solid 5.9 corner crack climbing, this pitch stand alone is an area classic.
By Joe Lee From: Mesa, Arizona Oct 11, 2005 rating: 5.9
This is a great route if you are looking for an adventure. The honeycomb chimney pitch and the final 5.9 corner are outstanding. The grade may not be high, but watch out, dangers lurk. If you are not an experienced multi-pitch trad climber, I would stay away.
Beta. If you think your partner may have trouble with the bulge on pitch 2, I would split pitch 2 into two pitches and belay after the bulge. On the upper half of pitch 2, there are several options. I did the middle hand crack which was pretty cool. On pitch 3, watch out for two chockstones. You don't want to pull them on top of youself. A sizeable number of rocks slid down the ramp on my way past. I tried to kick most of the loose stuff down but two rocks got jammed. On pitch 4, we started up the right corner, not the left. On pitch 5, you will eventually pass through a hole. I got confused here. I think the correct direction is to continue straight, not left or right. When you reach the large tunnel formed by a slab leaning against the rock, head straight along a ledge to a corner. Look up and right at one of the most intimidating corners around. On the descent, be careful on your first rappel. The rap route goes down a dangerous ramp covered with loose rocks. I took one step on the ramp and the entire ramp started sliding over the lip. I spent some time knocking down as many loose rocks as possible before rapping. This descent would benefit from a bolted anchor somewhere else. When you get to an area where you can go right or left, go left. You will see an isolated dead tree. I placed a sling around the base and we rapped through some holly. Proceed downward bearing left. Continue downclimbing and moving left. When you get to the lowest ramp as far left as possible, there is a bush on the left against a wall. Hidden behind the bush is a block. If you look very very carefully, you will see a perlon cord and an old rope in the bush. Rap and head down the gully. We got lost at the bottom of the gully so we followed a stream bed to the bottom. I recommend that you leave your packs in the stream bed on the approach and rack up. We grabbed out packs and took off. Enjoy.
This climb has some great pitches, but also some rather uninteresting and even unpleasant ones. More traffic is needed to clean up the route. The descent over to Olive Oil is also in need of more traffic!
Approach: we started at the base of Community Pillar, and endured a short ugly thrash to the route. Not clear if this is the easiest way to go. It didn't appear traveled.
P1: Fragile, soft rock. Pro early, pro often.
P2: Good hueco climbing, this pitch is easy except for the "bulge".
P3: Uninteresting pitch, but at least no bushes to crawl through. 100' long.
P4: Fantastic and unusual pitch. I slung two 1000 lb boulders rather than fiddle pro into all the huecos as in the photo.
P5: Here we climbed straight up the huecos, then traversed up and left on huecos to the squeeze. The squeeze doesn't last long, but is a pain with a pack.
P6: This was by far the worst pitch of the route. I'm not sure we went the best way, but there was much thrashing through evil vegetation and rope drag. To make matters worse, there is not much for an anchor at the base of the crux pitch, aside from inch diameter scrub trees, and one flarey crack where I (eventually) found a bomber #3 Camalot placement.
P7: "the business" is about 40' long. This section is considerably harder and more sustained than any other pitch on the route. The beginning of the crux is an intimidating flared chimney which requires some creative moves to climb. There are some features on the right wall that could also be climbed but (apparently) without pro. Above the flare the pitch becomes a beautiful corner for stemming and jamming. Huge amounts of loose rock at the top of this pitch.
P8: At the start there is a strange crack that seems harder than 5.7, but eventually I found a way to get up it at the grade (large cam useful at the start). Then nice cracks continue. At the end of the pitch I found a nifty passage under a chockstone which resulted in heinous rope drag. Above here you find yourself on a small summit, and downclimbing the other side is a bit tricky (we downclimbed roped up, for another short pitch).
Descent: The description is accurate but doesn't convey the thrashing and confusion regarding what level you should traverse at. When you get near the saddle (which appears close from the unroping point, but is not) you want to traverse on a ledge only slightly lower than the saddle. From the saddle it seems you could also go west to Crabby Appleton area, but once you see the nice trail down the other side, I guess why bother?
Pro: We had a #5 Camalot but never needed it. I would suggest taking doubles in Camalots from #1-#3 and one #4 Camalot (plus lots of smaller stuff, of course). For the crux pitch you need a #2 and/or #3 Camalot in the belay, and the leader will need to place a #4, #3 and #2 (in that order), and then smaller cams. Camalots work well in the huecos as you can place them passively.
Just climbed the last two pitches (we joined up with this from Birthday Party). Dont be afraid of the last corner- a little creativity and patience makes this corner more like 5.8- but the classic nature of it remains undiminished- its probably one of the best varnished corners in Red Rock.....
We used our #5 camalot twice on the last three pitches- once just before the 5.8 squeeze and again for the anchor at the base of the crux pitch. Also, I'd advise not belaying the 6th pitch (the traverse)- better to just coil and 4th class it.
Great climb, nice work guys. Nothing to complain about, the pitches just flew by. Descent presented no problems, not sure why other people said it was such an ordeal - par for Red Rock. We took the walk-off to the east; I'm glad we did the last pitch - it was a lot of fun and led to a cool summit.
Magic Mountain
RSS Feed
