Sundial Dihedral

A great route with exhilarating exposure and generally good rock. Route-finding is straight-forward and the line is fairly direct right to the summit.

Start on the SE side of the monument at a detached pillar. It's a wide 5.10 on the right or 5.8 on the left. Climb to top of the pillar for a single bolt belay. P2: Supposedly the first part of this section goes free, but the pro is difficult to place, and there's not really a good rest stance. I aided the whole second pitch which is 100' past the overhanging white wall with black horizontal streaks. Small stoppers and RPs along with a few cams will sew it up. Finish on a ledge with a bolt, not on the sloping ledge with only one drilled angle. P3: 60' Take the 5.8 chimney right out of the belay and make some tough moves to get going. Wide pro is useful here. Then lieback the exposed crack to another ledge with two drilled angles again. P4: 90' A fantastic pitch. Start in the hand crack up to a wide crack, but avoid using your #3 friend (or equivalent) size pieces down low here as you'll need them for the crux hand crack. Once you're established below a block at the top of the wide crack, make committing moves up the overhanging hand crack with only a few footholds to help. Keep plugging those #3 friends up the parallel crack for about 30' til you're under a roof. Traverse left under the roof (no pro) and exit to a ledge with two drilled angles. P5: 80' Now make your second carry all those large cams for this pitch. You'll only need a very small micro cam, RPs, and one each cams in the #1-3 Friend size. A #4.5 Camalot can be used to protect the last wide slot before the belay ledge. This pitch is 5.9+ but has some tricky and scary pro. Lieback the thin crack and head right but be careful of the huge block after the first rest stance. I put some weight on a micro cam here and started shifting the whole block. A fixed pin is in the dihedral on the left, but this is off route. Make some very wide stemming moves to get past this hard passage and up to a hand crack. Pull over the lip and onto a spacious ledge with three drilled pins. P6: 100' The final and dramatic pitch to end a superb route. Aid up 13 drilled angles right to the summit with some runout easy face climbing in between the 2nd and 3rd bolts and the 4th and 5th bolts.

To descend, make a double rope rap of Otto's Route past Lunchbox Ledge to the large shelf with the Time Tunnel. Traverse down the small tunnel to a short rap to a large ledge. Look for the last double rope rap to the right at the edge of the ledge.

Note: Steve Levin points out that this pitch should be done clean at C1. I would agree--now I feel bad for using a couple of pins. :(

Full set of Stoppers and RPs, doubles in cams from micro to #4 Friend, a #4 and #4.5 Camalot, 4 #3 Friends (or #2 Camalot) for the 11b hand-crack pitch and at least 13 draws for the final bolt ladder.