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Peak Mountain 3

Ella-vation

FA Ryan Grimm, April 2017
CREATED 
UPDATED 

Description

The first half of this route starts out with a very thin fingertips crack on an arête and then a few thin to solid hand jams before reaching a nice handsfree stance in the middle of the route. The second half follows the arête to the top.

The crux is without question the bottom half of the route. The crack is too small to be useful for jams especially since it is slightly overhung. On top of that be mindful of falls as immediately behind the climber are two tall boulders. However, creativity can yield some good pinches and some decent feet too. Some of the moves might be reachy for shorter climbers and try to conserve your skin for trying out different beta.

If the bottom half is too challenging, it can be skipped by starting from the top of the boulders which is still worthwhile if other routes are taken and you feel like a couple fun arête/friction moves off of a chicken head (I'd estimate the top half to be 10a or so).

Location

Left of Sphincter Quits is a easy 5.0 gully, this can be used to setup a top rope and for the descent. To find the route, start at the base of Sphincter Quits and continue following the wall left until you see an obvious thin crack just left of a blunt arête.

Protection

If you're going to try it on lead, it's probably good to be strong in the 11's and be confident with your slab/friction skills as the protection for the top half is marginal (single 0 sized cam in a shallow horizontal crack) with a guaranteed deck after hitting boulders on the way down if it blows.

It's also fairly easy to climb the gully around the corner to the right of this route and to the left of Sphincter Quits to setup a top rope (#1-#3 cams should do it).

Given the popularity of the crag and the natural appeal of the line, before adding a bolt to protect the slab moves I figured it was prudent to post here and give the community a good chance to claim it if it has already been established. I did check every guide book I could find, the binder of unpublished routes and the folks at Nomad to see if this was a known route already but nothing could be found.