Monk's Chin

Start left off of the highest boulder on south side of the Monk. Aid past 4 bolts to a slightly awkward transition to a couple easy free moves. Clip a bolt, then another free move gets you to a bolt ladder (about 8 bolts) through an awesome big roof. At the lip of the roof free climb up and right on hollow sounding jugs to two big eyebolts. From these it is about 25 m back to the belay platform. Fun route.

South side of the Monk. See approach under the Praying Monk area page. The approach requires a 4th/easy 5th class scramble up the headwall.

Quickdraws. As of summer 2017, the route is fully equipped. A hand sized cam and a large nut or two can be used for an anchor at the base for roped soloing.

A little route history from Dan "Dano" Leonard, February 2016

First, thanks for putting this route in.

The FA is Richard Leonard and Dan Knowles, Second Ascent Ed Leonard and Dan "Dano" Leonard in 1981.

Some other info, if yo'ure in to it:
Originally it had a few 1/4 inch Ramset/Red Head self-Drill Anchor/bolts and the rest 3/8" They were put in kind of close together, not that we had short gorilla arms but rather where the most sturdiest looking of surface area to work with, after all packed conglomerate mud slide is not know for being solid through and through.Heck, I still have boxes of unused anchors. It was done over a few weekends inter mixed with taking veteran and first timers scrambling up the east face. There was a pile of beer cans building up under a rock near the belay-sun-deck/south monk-rappel-landing area that eventually got cleaned up. At the time, Richard had his eye on the Monk roof route for while after doing Sewrey and Forest roofs a number of times.

Around the at time, I got my hands on a copy from a North Face outdoor's store of "A Climber`s Guide to Central Arizona by Jim Waugh,Larry Treiber and Bruce Grubbs." and being the rock-n-roll poet-artist I was back then, I drew in a south face of monk development drawing with the Monks chin route in ink on a mostly blank page in the Camelback section, put a few dabs from some color markers for fun and during a night of placid partying and nothing better to do.

Also around that time, I was a senior, at a school called "Camelback" high. we had a lot of free time and were going up and down rocks around the valley and the Monk was always a favorite to bring fiends and their girl friends, beginners or not. In the summer we would wait till it was nice and dark and just a bit cooler then park along the road among the houses in stone canyon just north-east of the Camels head and try not to wake anybody up as we trundled past houses and climbed over the Echo Canyon Park boundary fence to get to the walk up on the headwall. Not that we were doing anybody any harm but we weren't too worried back then, the Paradise Valley Police department only had a few cars and the station would virtually shut down at night. And it is amazingly well lit up on the hill with all the city lights burning all night long. through out the years I must have been on top of the Monk about 75 times, Good times, but I digress.

Richard wrote; One of the key points of the chin route is that it fit the tradition of roof aid climbs on camelback and was meant to be a training climb for bigger and better things and not a superduper 5.14c chalk freak climb. I knew for some reason someday that climb would be the best left on camelback and now with forest roof closed it is. And at one point, Marty Karabin clamed it is one of his favorite climb anywhere and that he replaced the original Rawl drive red head self drilling bolts using a funkness device. Marty, Please correct me, if I am wrong.

I got a few more photos of the monk from back in the day, that I have sent to Marty and Greg Opland, awhile back if interested.

Cheers,
Dan