My sister Jenny was passing through Boulder, so we set aside the weekend to do some climbing together. She had never climbed on the Diamond, and being that the Diamond is my favorite chunk of rock to climb in the area (or perhaps anywhere), we decided that the Casual Route would be a fun objective. But the Casual Route can be quite a conga line on the weekend. So we decided a good plan would be to approach The Diamond via a route on Chasm View Wall. This way we would be guaranteed at least one good route, and hopefully it would put us behind the morning rush to the base of the Casual Route.

We climbed the Red Wall route on Chasm View Wall. I had climbed Directissima the previous weekend, and had been eyeing Red Wall, since it sounded like a route on par with the high quality and low 5.10 difficulty of Directissima. Red Wall climbs a series of right-facing flake-dihedrals a couple of hundred feet left of Directissima. Jenny and I enjoyed this route, finding the climbing to be continually steep and interesting and the rock is very good. As had been the case the previous weekend, we were the only party on the entire wall, despite the sunny aspect and mellow approach. For comparison, there were half a dozen parties huddled at the base of the Casual Route, dodging icefall and waiting their turn.

One unique part of the day was watching giant icicles slough off the upper walls of the Diamond as they were melted off by the sun's light. We were glad to not be one of the 10 or so parties climbing on the Diamond below the sloughing ice, and fortunately no one seemed to get hit.

Pitch 5 of the Red Wall route ends on a band of dark rock that cuts across the face of the wall all the way from Broadway Ledge to the Chasm View ridgeline. The Chasm Cut-Off route (5.7) traverses this ledge system. Here, most parties cut right to the ridgeline, but we decided to cut left and traverse to Broadway Ledge. I had been intrigued by the idea of doing this traverse directly to Broadway rather than having to go up to the Chasm View Raps. The traverse from the top of Red Wall was mostly 4th class, with a few moves of low 5th. Cool—a new way to get to the base of the Diamond! And plus avoid the North Chimney!

We arrived at the base of the Casual Route just after 11am. Of the half dozen parties we had seen at the base of the route earlier that morning, a couple had bailed due to discomfort with the morning ice bombs, and the last party of the Casual Route conga line had headed up about an hour previous. Also, by this time most of the ice had sloughed off the upper walls, apart from two ginormous icicles hanging below the D1 chimney far above. But these seemed to be sticking to the wall, which was now in the shade. So we started up the Casual Route, feeling good about our time and the conditions. The first pitch is pretty easy and went quite quickly. But when I arrived at the belay at the top of the pitch, I encountered the party who had started up an hour earlier. The belayer assured me they would blast up the pitch and be out of our way in no time, but an hour later they were still blasting their way up Pitch 2. So Jenny and I decided to call it, in interest of getting out at a reasonable hour and climbing the next day. Too bad.

All in all, a great day out with my sister on a fun 5-pitch route at 13,000 feet, and figuring out a new means of access to the base of the Diamond. I suppose our failure to get up the Diamond just means that Jenny will have to come visit again. The following page provides an overlay and photos from the climb of Red Wall on Chasm View Wall. Enjoy.