Direct South Face

This is an excellent Alpine adventure up an obvious and spectacular corner system. According to the Bechtel guide, the route was previewed on rappel before leading. In its current state, about half the route consists of crumbling kitty litter, while half is bullet granite. I suspect with more traffic, this will clean up into a 3 or 4 star area classic! We did the route during an extended stretch of high pressure in August, and still had to negotiate several sections of wet rock (including the crux moves), so I suspect the route is almost always wet it places...probably best to get on this one late in the season (August).

P1: Begin as for the Becky route, at a black horizontal dike. When possible traverse right onto wandering crumbly slabs with sporadic gear. Find your way into the base of the obvious 400ft rightward angling corner and belay on a slab about 15ft below using 1-2 inch gear (5.8/5.9 150ft).

P2: Negotiate a couple dangerous loose blocks to gain the corner. Layback and jam up the corner, involving insecure footwork with thin but good pro. This pitch is rather crumbly and wet...I pulled off lots of loose flakes, and most of the feet crumbled away when I moved off of them...this pitch will become cleaner, and perhaps a bit harder, as it sees more traffic. There are a couple spooky blocks that should be avoided or trundled. Belay at a small ledge with good gear options (5.10ish, 170ft-ish). We had to break this pitch into 2 because we only had singles of TCU's and nuts, however it can easily be done ledge to ledge with doubles in the smaller sizes.

P3&4: The next 200-250ft features spectacular corner climbing on perfect clean granite (5.11a)! Layback and jam with mostly smears for feet, while the corner progressively angles harder and harder to the right. The climbing is sustained and classic. A couple of very wet mandatory hand jams made things a bit more interesting. We used a hanging belay in the middle of the pitch since we only had a light rack, however, strong parties might be able to put together an epic rope stretcher! The final 30ft-ish of the pitch traverses straight right on underclings, and the rock quality deteriorates a bit. The corner ends at bush and some black rock, where a belay can be had. From this point, I believe we ended up "off route", so I will describe what we did, and where I believe the route was supposed to go.

P5 (What we did): From the bush, I climbed straight up a clean flared corner with tenuous gear placement (5.10). At the end of the corner, one can either hand traverse left or right 20ft. We went right at around 5.9-ish. Whichever way you go, continue up to a ledge system with no gear, and return to some big flakes above and slightly left of the flared corner. From here, I climbed a dirty left facing corner, pulling mostly on grass tufts (5.9), up to a flake with good hand and fist sized gear. From here, hand traverse right (5.10) to a ledge, and then climb a short OW to a short thin hand crack leading to the ridge crest (5.9). (150ft, 5.10)

P5 Alternative?: About 20ft down and right from the bush at the end of the corner, I noticed what appeared to be a two bolt belay. I saw it from above after the hand traverse, and it was invisible (around a corner) from the bush belay. If it is a solid bolted belay, one could feasibly downclimb to it from the end of the corner, and then traverse right out of the belay into a better corner system on the right which appeared to lead to the ridge-crest as well.

Descent: From the ridge, one can either continue to the summit on the East Ridge (recommended), or descend the sidewalk section via down-leading to the class 3 ledges and back to camp. Apparently, one can also rappel the Becky Route which tops out to the north, although we did not investigate this option.

This route climbs the spectacular rightward-angling corner on the South Face of Wolfs Head.

Standard Rack to two #3 BD cams (no #4 needed). If you're hoping to do long pitches I would recommend doubles in the c3/tcu sizes and triples from 0.4 to #1 BD cams. No brassy's necessary. Also, WEAR LONG PANTS until the feet clean up a bit.

Because of the substantial lateral movement on this climb, bailing would be complicated. I would recommend two ropes and webbing in order to avoid leaving your whole rack behind if something does go wrong. Hauling the pack is also nice if there isn't anyone below the wall.