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Hill's Route

5.9, Trad, 5 pitches,  Avg: 2.4 from 7 votes
FA: Oliver Hill, Doug Wermer, 1985
Colorado > S Platte > Wigwam Creek/Lo… > Wigwam Dome

Description

Hill's route starts on the left side of the dome and follows the enormous dihedral for a few pitches.

Pitch 1 starts with a left-leaning crack up to easy ground and an interesting perch in 100'. Continue for another 40' with harder climbing in a hand crack to stemming and nice belay ledge with fixed gear.

Pitch 2 is the crux of the route. Start in a wide crack/chimney and find some tricky pro as the rock gets steeper. Try to hold to your big stuff for higher up. The crux is an offwidth section with a bush or two in it. As the angle kicks back, move onto the face and stretch your 60m rope getting to a nice belay ledge.

From here, you can either climb the crack to the left to a set of chains and rap off the side (awesome looking toprope, too) or continue to the top of the dome. If you continue up, a nice ledge traversing right is reached in two easy pitches. Move out on the ledge and belay below a fist crack where the ledge ends. The final pitch goes through a roof and up to one last steep corner where those big pieces will come in handy again. Keep an eye out for a pocket with some 3 inch, smoky quartz crystals in it! Overall, this is a pretty good route with lots of pitches.

Descent: Walk off to the west and down climb to a tree with a sling for a short rap.

Protection

A standard rack with some extra big pieces. We used a #3 Big Bro and some large cams on the crux pitch.

Comments [Hide ALL Comments]

Bryson Slothower
Portland, OR
[Hide Comment] Pitch 3 is the crux offwidth with the bushes, Hubbel's book calls it 5.8, but whoever rated it must have forgotten how hard it was or maybe there were more bushes to pull on. After this pitch, Hill's Route walks off the backside. I believe that getting to the chains mentioned above would include a pitch of 5th class climbing, maybe 5.9??. Hill and I cut right on the ramp where we got onto a different route. It is a good variation and adds a few fun pitches, one of which is 5.9 hand crack. Good route. May 7, 2002
[Hide Comment] FYI: To update the route, I did the FA of the route with Doug Wermer around 1985. I had been scouting around trying to find good lines for new routes, but the obvious ones had already been taken or were too hard work. I guess I did not have Ken Trout's creativity. It seems it has been named Hill's Route, but Oliver's Route would be much more friendly if not too late. Oct 22, 2009
rob bauer
Golden, CO
 
[Hide Comment] Just a comment on the "interesting perch" at 100': Don't belay there because you can't see the next pitch. Way better to keep going the extra 40 feet to a beautiful ledge where you can see the action on the crux bushy crack in perfect comfort. (Wish I'd done that.) Sep 11, 2011