Empire's New Groove

Empire's New Groove follows a line of fun and difficult climbing up the face of the newly developed West Tower on the left flank of the Halidome. 4 out of the 6 pitches are 5.12 or harder and offer great movement on what is generally fair to excellent quality granite. All of the rock is solid and fairly clean, but there is some variability pitch-to-pitch in terms of lichen quantity, flakiness, etc. With that said, the crux pitch features perfect, clean alpine granite, as good as the best around anywhere. The cruxes of the other hard pitches are clean and enjoyable as well. All pitches are either mostly or completely bolted. Those that do require gear just take a piece or two to supplement the bolts. The climbing style is generally defined by technical, vertical crimping, although there is a little variety on some of the pitches to keep things interesting!

P1: 5.12a (30m). Start up the easy slab passing one bolt to ledgy terrain (be careful) leading to the base of the dark, overhanging wall. Climb out the first roof passing three bolts (long runners), and take a rest before setting off on the steep wall above. This is great climbing, although the rock leaves a little to be desired. Don't get too flash pumped!

Gear: 7 quickdraws, 2 alpine draws (maybe even an extra long on bolt 2, which you can back clean from the lip of the first roof to mitigate drag). There is webbing and rings on a large tree at the top of the pitch.

P2: 5.8ish (30m?). This is a shitty pitch. It just connects up to the base of P3 where the climbing gets good again. Climb past the first bolt aiming for a small tree. Then head left up the slab with a cool little finger crack. At the top of this, step left around the arete and follow more bolts up to the spacious P3 belay ledge.

Gear: 4 bolts, #1 cam, slings for tree, and cams 0.2 or 0.3, 0.75.

P3: 5.12b (40m). This is an awesome pitch! Start with 2 bolts of easy climbing leading up to the good stuff. From here, it's all about great rock with multiple cruxes separated by great rests. Consider having a 0.2 handy to protect the reach clipping the 4th bolt. When the bolts end, take the thin flake up to the belay.

Gear: 8 bolts (bring a couple runners), cams 0.2 X2, 0.3, and 0.4.

P4: 5.11c (40m). This is an interesting pitch! It is perhaps a bit nebulous. Climb straight up from the belay where you can sling the tree. Fight through the tree a bit to reach the first bolt. Go up, then traverse left, and climb up the corner to a good stance. Peek around the left arete to locate a hidden bolt. From this point, it's basically a dead horizontal, leftward traverse. The climbing is easy, but the bolts are spaced and not always visible. Do not climb too high or you will get off route. At the end of the ledgy terrain, climb DOWN to where you can most easily traverse left to the flake where the bolts start going up again. At the top of the flake, go straight up the licheny slab (crux), catch a rest, then do one more funky sequence to the anchor.

Gear: 12 bolts (bring many runners).
Note: be mindful of the key crimp in the crux. It flexes.

P5: 5.13a/b (25m). This is the crux pitch! Execute a funky boulder problem off the belay to a rest standing on the ledge with the abandoned raptor nest. Set off on some pumpy moves that lead to the start of the crux, overhanging dihedral. The next 3 bolts are hard, technical bouldering on perfect rock with beautiful moves - 5/5 stars. From the jug and the end of this section, move up easier terrain past a couple small gear placements to a bolted anchor on the large slab.

Gear: 8 bolts, and cams 0.2 and 0.4.

P6: 5.12b/c (30m). Climb through cool daggers off the ledge. You can use a #1 and maybe a 0.75 to preclip the first draw, then back clean. Fun 5.10 takes you past a cam placement to a good rest, then you get sustained 5.12 face through the final 3 bolts to the top of West Tower!

Gear: 8 bolts (a couple runners), cams #1 and 0.75 to get first bolt clipped and a 0.5 in the middle of the pitch.

Descent: either "walk off" or make 5 single rope rappels to the top of pitch one (where you can easily walk off to the right).

Walkoff: unrope if you'd like at the P6 anchors, and easily scramble to the top of the buttress. From there, head west and down the loose scree gully. You can follow this all the way down basically to the road. It will maybe take an hour and is very unpleasant. There is a much nicer way to go down in this general direction that avoids the gully in favor of 4th Class and some low 5th Class downclimbing, although it may be more time consuming when factoring in potential route finding difficulties. It's my preferred method having hiked to the summit so many times this way, so I'll include a beta photo. It's fairly straightforward.

Rappels: do 5 single rope rappels to the top of P1 where you can walk off to the right back to the base. The first two rappels follow the route and bring you to the base of P5. From here, rappel down the slab hugging the main wall. You'll encounter another bolted anchor about 2/3rd down the slab. From this anchor, keep going to the last station on the ramp (it's huge, and you can walk around on it). One final rappel takes you to the top of P1. We used an 80m while doing the raps. A 70m will definitely work, but I can't speak to a 60m.

14 draws total (6 should be alpines), a set of cams from #0.2 - #1 with an extra #0.2. Bring an 80m rope for lowering back to P3 belay from the top of the pitch.

See the area page for approach beta.