Quintet 

This route does not start on the right.

I'd like to hear more about the starts to this route. We started on the left, under the obvious small roofs, and got totally shut down trying to move up under the bigger roof, about 30 feet above the starting ledge. Poor hand holds and no feet...it seemed a lot harder than 5.10. Can someone who has successfully climbed it this way comment? Has anything broken, or am I just weaker than I thought? Wish we had thought to try the other option, starting on the right and moving left at the roof. That looks more doable.

It's nice to see someone else has problems with this pitch. I too got up to that roof and got completely shut down, and I ended up downclimbing and bailing. I'd be curious to hear if anyone has actually succeeded this way.

We tried heading up the corner system, left of the bolted route in the above photo. I had trouble getting gear that felt solid, and the moves seemed way hard compared to other routes at the grade in the area. Got totally shut down.

A friend and I did this in '96 following the topo shown in the current and last guidebooks. He thought it was solid 5.11 or harder and wound up taking a nasty fall at that roof/protrusion about mid-way up... the rock was a little scaly and the lower half that he climbed didn't appear to have been climbed much. Interestingly, the 1999 Rossiter Boulder Canyon guidebook topo shows "11" at one point in this left start, even though the route is supposedly 5.10c.

We later checked in with Dan Hare, and Dan mentioned that the route actually started in from the right as for Coney Island, and that the guidebook topo was wrong. We came back in 2006 and started on Coney then traversed left (as shown in the photo above), and it felt about 5.10d or 11a that way and adequately protected. Maybe that left start shown in the guidebooks is waiting for a first ascent, though seems likely someone has done it that way by now?