Crest Jewel 5.10a

Truly a gem – a 10 pitch face climb up the side of North Dome. Since Betsy and I were staying on the east side we choose to hike in from Hwy 120 at Porcupine Flats, a well signed and heavily traveled 5 mile trail to North Dome. Well, not heavily traveled before dawn. We know Crest Jewel is now typically done with a linkup with Royal Arches but perhaps not mid-summer - not us anyway.

We ate a breakfast croissant near the top of North Dome, then dropped down the gully on the unfortunate start of a 1.5 hour bushwack. The trail down is OK, but we veered off toward the dome too soon – twice. Now we know – you really drop down to what is perceived as far below the dome before you cut over. Now after that hot brutal start and with most of our water cached at the top, it was time to ration water to small sips for the climb.

The climb is awesome and morning is key as the rock just started to feel hot as we got off the top. The views are tremendous and the rock is near perfect. We did after a while realize that it is best to view the bolts as somewhere in the vicinity of the route and not necessarily right on route (or at least the route we wanted to take..) It wasn’t uncommon to step over to clip, then climb or even downclimb back to your line.

As noted elsewhere it is bolted per the grade: pretty well bolted on the 5.10 bits, kind of runout on the 5.8 sections and the relatively easy 5.6/5.7 dike pitch had but one bolt.

Lunch and three liters of water waited for us at the top and how sweet it was, then a relatively easy but mainly uphill walk out to hwy 120.