BETA PHOTO: Red line...Tree Route Yellow line...House of Cards...
Description
House of cards climbs the clean, airy slabs above the big overhangs on the North Face of the Colapit Buttress. The line stays left of the crack system that possibly was followed by the DNF route. We originally climbed 7 pitches, but decided to add 2 more approach pitches of lesser quality to avoid the hike around by the Triangle wall gully. All of the pitches were done in traditional ground up style.
Sadly, recent rockfall has changed the Tree Route, which we followed for 35'. Most of the tree was knocked off when a 15' x 35' section of rock slid off. Since the tree is only 10' tall now, the additional climbing to pass this section is now 5.11. Higher above the tree, the climbing is now easier and safer.
P1 - (begins at traverse ledge above direct start) Climb a clean arete to where you can traverse left and up to a belay. P2 - Climb a short roof to a finger hidden crack. Follow this up to a great ledge with a broken pine tree. P3 - Climb tree and either free or aid past fixed gear (5.10 A0 or 5.11) to some stacked blocks. Above here is a section of new rock that is protected by some bolts. Originally, this pitch made an improbable, heads-up traverse right along a prominent spike of rock. Belay beneath the Guillotine, a precarious looking flake. P4 - Climb over the roofs above, passing the Guillotine (it's pretty solid...we bounced on it as hard as we could) P5-7 - Obvious face climbing.
Descent You can now rap the route with just one 70m rope. The 2nd rap from the top goes to a small pin tree on the west.
Greg Kirchoff, Jonathan Smoot & Dallen Ward also helped out.
Thanks for all the work on this one. I saw you way up on the slabs one saturday after the rockfall by your little own self. Clay raves of this one. Looks very nice.
This was really fun - too bad about the rockfall because the traverse along the spike was really cool and wild. A few feet got chopped off the end, but you can still see the spike on the tree pitch off to the right as you begin moving left on bolts. I originally had thoughts about making a gear belay in the crack that made the delineation between what stayed and what fell off. But even on the first time through I never really wanted to hang out in that area... Its all clean now though!
As with any route this new, you should tread very carefully on anything that even looks like it could come off. Wear a helmet and your belayer should watch carefully. One more thing - the guillotine was bounced on by several of us each time we passed by. Have fun on the upper slab because its as clean as it gets on that headwall. Kind of like a 5.9 version of the 5th pitch of Stifflers.
Damned! I better take up river rafting in the Grand Canyon...better chance of a permit! I might have to address my fear of drowning, though! cheers, jg
By Ben Folsom From: Sandy, Utah Aug 25, 2008 rating: 5.11
Maura and I climbed House of Cards yesterday. Great, exciting route! Thanks for all the work to equip the route and clean it up. Quality climbing. We could not find the direct start even though we searched for about an hour. So I ended up leading a completely direct start further left, and probably left of "Nanook of the North". I did the lower, broken wall in one 70 meter pitch, probably about 5.9 R. I'll post a photo with our variation. Did not encounter or leave any fixed gear on the variation we climbed. This pitch climbed directly below the 5.6 bolted arete of pitch #1. According to Brian Smoot's topo, on the route proper we combined pitches 1 and 2 (using long slings on everything). The crux third pitch was hard, and climbing through the "House of Cards" was thrilling. We also combined the long 6th and short 7th pitches which was exactly 70 meters (there was barely enough rope left to tie into the anchor). Also, with two 70 meter ropes we rapped from pitch 7 to 5, 5 to 4 (short rap), 4 to 2, then 2 to the approach ramp from Triangle Gully. Anyway, awesome route in an amazing position with fantastic views of the canyon. Thanks again for all the work that went into the establishment of this route.
By Ben Folsom From: Sandy, Utah Aug 25, 2008 rating: 5.11
After looking at the photos with the route lines, we climbed basically the pink dotted line to reach the ledge below pitch 1. (the 1970's direct start). We did it in one 70 meter pitch. Lots of long slings and few gear placements kept rope drag to a barely tolerable amount. I also want to say that "House of Cards" is a fantastic and fitting name for this route.
We climbed a TC route for 3 long pitches for the "approach pitches". They were very good and recommended. We neither found the Smoot/Watson start nor the piton from the topo. An appropriate name for the climb, House Of Cards is a scary place and the 3 of us were quite intimidated at the "Guillotine" belay. None of us thought it long for this world nor the next. The 4 star Pitch #6 is classic Smoot and spectacular. Feeling more like a survivor, a fine Wasatch adventure nevertheless.
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