Photos: | Photo descriptions: | ||
Approach | From Burgundy Col, descend 300' and then make a rising traverse below the east face to base of route. May be snow. | 1. Looking down the east side of Burgundy Col. The snow was soft enough that we were able to get to the base of the route without needing crampons and ice axe. 2. Steep snow below the east sides of the Wine Spires. We were able to kick steps up to the base of the route. 3. If you don't have an ice axe, maybe a #4 cam will at least slow you down... | |
Pitch 1 | 5.9 | 4. Looking up Pitch 1 from the base of the route. The first half of the pitch is on clean and splitter white granite. The second half pulls a roof into lichen-coated rock. Despite the lichen, the climbing is pretty good. | |
Pitch 2 | 5.9 | 5. Pitch 2 starts up a fingercrack that is hidden from view from the belay. 6. Looking up the fingercrack. | |
Pitch 3 | 5.10b/c | 7. Pitch 3 starts off with a fingercrack that splits through the arete. This is the technical crux of the route (5.10b/c). Because of the lichen and occasional loose rock, this part seemed pretty desperate to me. If cleaned up, it would be excellent climbing. 8. Climbing through the lichen-coated flakes on the second half of the pitch. | |
Pitch 4 | 4th | 9. Pitch 4 is an easy scramble to the base of the chimney. I set my belay a bit off to the side to try to put the belayer out of the main zone of rockfall from the chimney. 10. An old hex. | |
Pitch 5 | 5.8 | 11. Looking up the chimney
. The climbing is fairly fun and protectable for the most part. But it is a long pitch so I was running low on gear towards the end and had to put up with some longer runouts towards the end. 12. Looking down while climbing the chimney. | |
Pitch 6 | 5.8 | 13. Pitch 6 starts up this grungy rotten corner. 14. Looking up the corner. The route descriptions we had recommended face traversing left out of this corner, but we never found the traverse back in and got sort of off route. Wish we had gone up the corner... 15. The face traverse out of the corner. 16. Looking up from the top of our Pitch 6. We are too far left of the route here. I ended up leading straight up to the notch on the right, where we rejoined the route at the 1953 bolt. But this next section had some enormous death blocks and some difficult moves and was kind of terrifying to lead. | |
Pitch 7+ | 5.8 | 17. DR starting off the pitch. This is where the route joins the 1953 Northeast Face route. As suggested by the SuperTopo guidebook, "Pitch 7" ended up being 3 short pitches to the top for us, first climbing up the arete and then traversing right and wrapping around to the north side of the summit, where we climbed a wide crack to the top and ended up at the top rap anchor for the descent route. 18. An ancient 1953 bolt. This is part of the Northeast Face route. 19. Climbing the arete towards the summit (Pitch 7a). 21. Traversing right to get to the north face (Pitch 7b). 22. DR on the summit. We climbed the cracks just below him to get there (Pitch 7c). This is the crack system the descent route rappels past. | |
Descent | Rappel the North Face route with a single 70m rope. | 22. Cool clouds to the west. Getting late in the day too - gotta get down! |