Road Warrior

This is one of the best climbs on the Thunderdome. You’ll have to hike up the gully a ways before you can spot the steep upper column ending at the base of a large chimney. Look for the big pillar high on the wall.

The climbing starts on the snow/ice covered slabs below and right of the pillar. Climb 3 pitches of easy ice and snow to the base of the crux pillar. The pillar is just about 60m making for a long pitch and usually features sustained, yet good ice. From the top of the pillar, move up and left on snow covered rock. Look for a ramp to cut back right and take this to a nice pedestal for a belay (fixed pins). From the belay, move right on thin ice smears or dry rock and then climb up and back left to access the chimney. Once in the chimney it soon narrows down to a squeeze for about 20 feet (the crux).  Above this section the chimney opens back up to fun stemming with good hooks, and edges.  There are fixed pins for a belay under the large chockstone about 30m above the pedestal.  Alternately you could avoid the chockstone and climb up the left face for 10 feet to a nice ledge with good pin cracks, then traverse back right above the chockstone.  Either way the last pitch is much more mellow mixed climbing for 30m up to a tree belay.

This climb was originally done just to the top of the ice in 2015 by Scott Coldiron and Christian Thompson. It was named Blackwell Falls and graded WI5. If you are not interested in the mixed climbing above, Blackwell Falls as just an ice line is still a worthy objective.