Easy Wind
Trad climber
Oakland, California
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Aug 25, 2014 - 11:10am PT
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We went up to try Night Shift this past weekend. Our friend Christina climbed the route with Katie in July, so we reached out for some info. Her advice was to "work some magic on the rock, pray to the slab gods, and wear your best shoes".
Spot on advice. We laced up our tightest boots and had a fun time making our way through the first three pitches. As Mikey said, pitches 4 & 5 are like night and day compared to the first three. We made it into the crux pitch, albeit at a much slower pace, as angle and difficulty increased. In the end we felt like we weren't doing the route justice, as we were doing more falling than climbing, and decided to go down. Unique climbing that steep slab is!
Overall, we thought is was a great route. We agree that pitch 4 felt on par, in difficulty, with pitch 5. Nails hard and cryptic. The character of the rock changes above the dike (top of pitch 3), from positive texture and thin knobs to potato chips on slick golden rock. One would greatly benefit from toes of steel and some jedi slab reading skills on this route.
There was some friable rock - we broke an edge or two and blew out a knob on the beginning of pitch 5. I wonder how much harder, if at all, this thing has gotten as these chips and edges exfoliate...
Either way, it's well-protected and an excellent route for testing your mettle on hard slab.
Thanks for putting this one up, Mikey.
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