Papa Woolsey 

Bring a small selection of gear for the anchor. The walk-off to the west involves some exposed downclimbing that beginners will not enjoy. Perhaps better to lower them from atop the route instead.

The climb's a classic. Crux is at the top, I thought. Beautiful position. Getting off is another story. Downclimbing to the West looked too heinous (chimneying) to me. I headed to the entire opposite end of the rock and there's a horn there to rap on on the right side, off the East side as you're facing the back of the rock. Two raps with a single rope. It was an okay rappel. Not too hard a pull. We left a sling and a rap ring on the lower ledge. Some Josh rats hollered up that I could traverse a ledge system on the East side where I rapped, but it looked way exposed, though may be possible.

We scrambled over the top and descended via "The Bong" descent route, which involves some tricky downclimbing.

Can still do it so it's not C or better. It is more difficult than it used to be though, polished.

Climbed this last weekend. Great route and good bolt placements except for the 5th bolt. You may be standing on that big ol' knob but if your 5'7" or under could be an interesting clip. I'm almost 5'8" and I had to do a half move using that left hand crimp and stand on my tip toes just to barely clip the darn thing! And with your last bolt a good 6 ft under you..... Yee ha! Whoever bolted that one had to be 6 foot! For me the crux was the orange rib at the 3rd bolt going to the 4th. Took me 2 tries to fire it. Next time I think a could cruise the whole thing whithout hangdogging! There was a lot of slings rapped around the chock stone near mama woolsey that we rapped off of. Be carefull, the angle wants to pitch you into the chimmney on the right or just descend over by the bong down all the chicken heads (a little exposed but pretty easy). You can see the descent from the function boulder (big square boulder with an old bolt ladder near campsite 26?)

Due to the fact that this thing is polished I am going with 5.10c...I did it last week and it certainly has some really cool moves. Especially up a ways going over the bulge...........and the down climb is not that bad via the chimney to the west I think..............the one aimed away from the campground..........there are fixed slings around a boulder currently... but kind of crunchy and I did not use them..........

This route continues to evolve. It's greasier that the last time I climbed it about three years ago. I'll call it a 10C now.

A classic intro to the grade. Hang doggers delight. The walk off will get ya before the route will.

This route has gotten harder over the years.

Thought the crux of this route was between bolts 1 and 2. After that the angle eases a very tad, and then once you hit the big basketball sized knob (great rest), the features and movements are a little more defined. Putting a bolt anchor at the top will always be a heated debate, but always bring a few hand sized cams to build a natural one in the perfect crack at the top. Easiest retreat is going back towards the bong and doing the walkoff back there.

As for the anchor, you should be fine with just a standard set of nuts, no need to bring anything more if you're confident in setting passive pro.

Well, someone decided to add a "permanent" anchor that I've never seen before. It consists of a long piece of steel cable wrapped around a boulder where people frequently rap from slings atop Papa Woolsey. About 20 feet of cable are slung around a boulder and secured with multiple screwdriver-tightened crimps. Two aluminum rap rings provide a place to put your rope. It's a decent idea, I guess, but there was far more cable up there than would be necessary and it really looks bad. On top of that, the crappy aluminum rap rings were used and the security of the cable connectors is hard to evaluate.

I kind of like this cable-sling idea for "permanent" rap slings as opposed to nylon slings if it were done right. But in this case it has been done poorly and looks bad. I didn't trust the mess and just did the walk-off.

Traversing past the chimney to the slab may be easier for some than downclimbing the wide crack. I honestly don't think either one is really very hard.

Don't expect the new anchor to be there for long...

I don't! Thanks to whomever cleans the mess up.

If you go to do it, bring a mid-sized flat & phillips head screwdriver and/or cable cutters. The cable is approximately 1/4" diameter (not that large) and should be easy to cut.

The cables are not there anymore. Further, the chimney decent off the back next to Buisonier (climbers left) was not that bad at all, plenty of holds in there. Took about 2 minutes to get back to my shoes. Route was challenging at the bottom and pretty slick.

Yeah it's gone, got rid of it a couple weeks ago. Two Crescent wrenches took care of it just fine. Wish I took a picture to show what it looked like while strung up; it doesn't look near as bad in the picture:

Photo

Any news on when the escalator is getting installed?

I'm going to be the guy to introduce a "d" at the end of 5.10. It's thin. It's slick. It's a lot of fun. But yea... 5.10c/d.

This climb is such a classic slab route. The edges haven't changed in 30 years. Depending on the time of year and the traffic, the rating will vary from a hard 10a to 10c (depends on the grease). I did it the othe day and it was a hard 10a. Well protected.

Gotta agree with atthecrux. The crux was no problem, but clipping that bolt off the horn was a bitch. I'm 5'7 and some change with a + ape index and also had to to the move off the horn before (barely) being able to clip the bolt.

Great climb though.

Greasy and thin at crux between bolt 1 & 2. A hard move on a quality campground route.

Very fun route, and very well bolted. The closeness of the bolts should give you courage to go for it. The two cruxes for me were passing the second bolt, and leaving the large rest stance at the 2nd to last bolt.

If this is 10C, what do we do with C.S. Special - also a 10B - which is easily a letter grade harder? Did I send a 10D slab? The simple answer is to just consider 10 slab hard.

I found the crux to be at the start--possibly due to too many people shedding too much rubber trying to get up the thing on toprope just before us. Up high it didn't seem near as difficult. Nice climb.