Psychotic Love  5.10 R

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Type:  Trad, 3 pitches, 450 feet Consensus:  5.10 [details] FA:  Noah McKelvin, solo New Route:  Yes Submitted By:  Noah8000 on Jul 4, 2012 You & This Route  |  Other Opinions (1) Your todo list: Your stars: Your rating: -none- [change] Your ticklist: [add new tick]

Looking down from halfway up P3.

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Description 

I've been looking at this line for a while and finally gave it a go. After trying to persuade anyone to join me, I had no such luck. Something about loose rock really turns people off. I decided to rope solo it and see how it went. Have your route finding down. This route is serious in a few places. No bolts were placed. If you can deal with adventure, a little loose rock, and some runouts, then I think this is a good route with good exposure. If you want good rock, avoid this.

Psychotic Love starts in the left-slanting crack system to the left of the Craig Luebben Memorial Route. Belay from the lone bolt at the base. You also have to do the low fifth class traverse to get over here which in itself creates some adventure.

P1. Work up in the awkward crack (#4 useful), and once it ends, continue up face climbing with gear here and there, but a bit of it is questionable. After almost 50 meters, a nice little pod in a dihedral is presented that you can't see from the ground. Build the anchor carefully here (5.9+).

P2. Get ready for a a fun ride. Your goal is to basically aim for the double bolt anchors high up and left and 50 meters away. (Fool's Gold anchors). This pitch is the route finding crux for sure. Continue up another 20 feet to the top of the sort of dihedral you belayed in. Place a 0.4 in here and extend it like crazy. A long traverse left with no gear (at least I couldn't find any) eventually leads you to the ledge with the fixed ropes. It's the second to last bolt for the fixed ropes if I remember, where you work up over an exciting roof. It's the main weakness in this roof section. From here, traverse left, up and then back right via a airy small ledge to the anchors of Fool's Gold before its 5.11 pitch. There is a nice little ledge (5.10a R).

P3. Clip the first bolt and do a cruxy move to surmount the small roof. From here, you traverse straight left from underneath the fixed quickdraw for Fool's Gold. Work your way up the weakness to eventually traverse back right over bushes to the bolt with a fixed biner. You then continue straight up the dihedral to the top. There are a couple fixed, junky pieces. You are soon underneath a small roof with sketchy rock and sketchy gear pretty far below. Take a deep breath, and gun it for the top. A nice tree to the left is presented (5.10 R). You could also traverse far left and avoid the top sketchy bit of climbing, if you get bad weather, to the tree.

Location 

Rappel one of the other popular routes around. Make sure you got your descent down before going up.

Basically the route works up left of the Craig Luebben Memorial Route and then joins up with Fool's Gold for the very last part of P2 and then leaves it to skirt left.

Protection 

Wear a brain bucket! Make sure to test the holds. Be careful below. I had gold miners underneath me when I was on it.

I brought singles from TCUs to #4 with a set of nuts and lots of alpine draws. You don't need much.

Photos of Psychotic Love Slideshow

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Photo by Darren Mabe. The route drawn in black.	No crowds today! Except on the road.	Dihedral at top on rappel to clean the anchor. You...
Nice little top out!	Dihedral up top.	Route is pretty long by Clear Creek standards.
You can see the pod/small belay ledge at the base ...	Halfway up P1.	From the base.