Seamingly Hard is the often-admired-but-less-often-climbed slab left of Gemstone, and is a nice sustained thin face climb. It seams a little close to easy ground to the left at the beginning, but soon the quality of the moves makes up for that, as you follow a left-trending seam, then start heading straight up after the 3rd bolt. It's always a relief to get to the next bolt, the headiest part is a 20' runout at about the level of the Gemstone pitch 1 anchor. The crux is pulling a small roof after you clip the bolt after the runout. Next you'll join another left trending seam, passing a fixed pin, then the cracks widen and the climbing is noticeably easier. Find the Gemstone anchor.
It is possible to belay at the pitch 1 bolted belay for Gemstone, but linking these into a 200' pitch is more fun, and means no potential to fall on the belay at the start of what would be the 2nd pitch. The rope drag wasn't bad.
There are more bolts than shown in the guidebook, but you'll probably be glad they are there.
This will feel hard for the grade if you're not used to 5.10 slab. There aren't many like this in the Sandias, so it's hard to compare. If you feel good on this route, you're ready for Questa Dome and The Tooth and stuff like that.
This might be worth calling PG13 because it's a bit spacey between the bolts (especially compared to Palomas Peak, Socorro, El Rito, etc etc.), but it's not too scary by slab standards. I think the only really dangerous place would be if you fell right before the 2nd bolt. Don't do that.
Location
The bolted route on the slab left of Gemstone is Seamingly Hard.
The easiest descent is to rappel with 2 ropes (or a single 70m rope?-which I haven't tried personally) from the anchor to the ground.
Protection
6 bolts and a pin, are supplemented with cams up to 1", including micros. You could probably place 2"-3" cams in the easier upper part of the climb if you bring them.
The bolted route is "Seamingly Drunk," a combination of the "Seamingly Hard" start, and the "Drunken Master" finish. The line was retro bolted after the 4th known ground fall and subsequent rescue ensued in 2009. Ground fall potential is far less and the quality line now exists. The rating of the bolted line is .10b/c
Cheers, Marc Beverly
By George Perkins Administrator From: Los Alamos, NM Oct 28, 2009
Thanks, Marc. I remember attempting, and backing off of, "Seamingly Hard" around 2003, thinking it would take more stones than I had, but I didn't remember any specifics about how many bolts were there back then and did not know more had been added when I led this climb last weekend. [I originally listed the climb as PG-13, as an average of my impressions, but with the new bolts, it's not so bad.]
RSS Feed
