Southeast Gully  5.4

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Type:  Trad, 5 pitches, 1000 feet Consensus:  5.3 [details] FA:  ?? Season:  All Year Submitted By:  Jeremy Hakes on Apr 7, 2006 You & This Route  |  Other Opinions (6) Your todo list: Your stars: Your rating: -none- [change] Your ticklist: [add new tick]

This is the final summit block. You can see the n...

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Description 

The route follows the SE gully up to the summit. The first "pitch" is a small crack climb 5.4, which Roach calls one of the cruxes. Just to the east on the face, lots of good face climbing exists with the flakes and slabs of Pikes Peak granite. This is a short pitch. From there, the easiest line that exists to the summit is only class 3 until you get to the top of the hanging garden. There, you can climb a tree to a crack (class 3) to another tree, and then from there to the class 5.4x traverse to the main summit. This is an exposed little traverse, and a little scary, but many people free-solo it. We roped up for the first pitch and summit pitch and used a 30M rope. There are tons of different routes available all over the gully, and we kept the climbing at a more difficult 4+ (with a few 5.0-5.5 spots) all the way to the summit, just for the sake of spiciness. The final summit block was climbed (FA?) by the SSE face - about 30' high, and a flaring off-width (5.7+). We installed a new extra-long sling from the summit block over the east face with 2 new rap rings to rappel down using our 30M rope, which was just long enough. Follow the same route down that you came up.

Location 

From the Wellington Lake TH, hike directly to the south ridge of the Castle, and follow the easily discernible gully to the summit. There is another gully on the NE face that is much steeper, but probably also climbable.

Protection 

No fixed pro exists. We used cams (.5-3.0) and a few taper nuts and tri-cams for the climb. Tri-cams are awesome for this climb.

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The SE gully is clearly visible.	Our landing from the rappel. The climbing tree is...	BETA PHOTO: The very faint arrow at the start of the route (de...