Two Lost Guys

For a route "topo" see the photo posted to the main Outlook-Area page.

North Bald Cap, across the way, has it's "Lost Boys" area, so we called this "Two Lost Guys".

Acting on a recent post to MntPrjct we took gear and a printed copy of posted descriptions, along with some fairly high resolution photos I'd taken from No. Bald Cap a couple of years earlier, and went exploring. Outlook's submitter (Ron Birk) had sent me a link to a photo with routes, but I never clicked on it as I had assumed that the link was to the written descriptions in a public blog. (Yes, pretty dumb of me, eh?!)

After the grind to the top (1200 ft in 1.2 miles to the Outlook Junc.) we had many discussions on "Where, exactly, is this "tree island"? (Later I was to conclude it was on the very top of the cliff !)

We did find the double bolted anchor about 100-120 ft down the climber's-left skyline ridge. (photo) We used this to rap down what you'd call the "west face" (190 ft rap, staying to rappeller's left and not dropping right over the overhangs) to a good tree ledge. (According to the photo on "smug-mug.com" there's another dbl bolt anchor about 30-40 ft right, and 10-20 ft higher than this ledge. On a 2nd trip to the Outlook we would find this station, see "Hand Over Hand") A solid 5-inch diameter pine provided a 2nd anchor to rap down the "south face". We stopped about 150 ft down at a pine tree, about 30-40 ft from what looked to be the base. (Much scrub and many trees would have made for an unpleasant rap of this final 50 ft.)

P1 - Climb back to the pine tree ledge. For us, this pitch included climbing a fairly prominent, 25-30 ft high R-facing corner of more distinctly yellowish rock. (in photo of P1) 150 ft 5.3 Whether this pitch included any of "Hand Over Hand" is not known for sure. [Disclaimer: due to the weather, and the rope-mess that would have resulted in pulling the ropes into the trees and bushes, the "leader" top-rope soloed this pitch.]

P2 - Step right from the belay pine, then up the white-ish rock via a series of corners, flakes and faces, (photos) arriving at the dbl bolt anchor. 190 ft 5.4-5.5 It is now believed that this pitch is about 25-30 feet climber's left of the top pitch of "Hand Over Hand" This was a very nice pitch, and more interesting than it looked when we rapped down it. Whether it had been done before I have no idea. Can't believe it hadn't.

"P3" (as per "Hand Over Hand") - scramble 100-120 ft to the top trees. Class 3 to 5.0

After this climb we were still confused about where the already-established routes were, so one of us got lowered down 125-140 ft in two places on the main face of the cliff. We could not see any of the dbl bolt anchors that are supposed to be there, but given the mica embedded in the rock, this is perhaps not surprising, or perhaps we did not lower far enough. (The first of our lowers is now known to have been only about 40-50 ft to climber's right of "Sweet Success")

The rock was generally quite climbable, and of a similar nature to the pegmatite section of Pine Mountain. Climbing back up from these "lower downs" was generally in the 5.3-5.5 range, including traversing under what had looked like a formidable overhang from our stance at the lower pine tree on "Two Lost Guys".

Std Rack - Mid-sized cams (0.4 to 1.0 Camalot-sizes) seemed best.