After a good attempt on the excellent Beyond Lunacy (here's that TR) on a Saturday in February 2012, Adam and I wanted to spend Sunday on something easier.
Lucky for us, a nice dude in the Reed's pullout -- a pullout that always seems to have nice people in it -- had a photocopy of a newish route that McTwisted had put up at Pat and Jack's. Handful of pitches, well-protected, lots of moderate climbing... sounded right, so we took a photo of his topo blasted out to P & J's.
Ended up being an excellent day: mellow, safe, super fun, with great position and mostly excellent climbing that leads through good exposure to a five-star summit.
I'd definitely recommend this climb to anybody looking for a low-commitment, high fun day. It'd be especially good for folks breaking into the 5.10 grade and wanting to get some quality multi-pitch in.
We started up Knob Job and crossed over left into SSH.
Expect quality hardware all the way up
Lots of big, juggy knobs on this climb – one of P&J's signatures.
Nice looking but very toothy finger crack in a dihedral
The steepness that awaits after you traverse left out of the dihedral and across a fun, open face
That face traverse protects with cams – when we did it in Feb, there was a bolt nearby, but I believe the FA's intention was to go back and pull that one.
Bolt (probably extinct now) and bomber cam:
The airy belay in the steeps
Moving out of the dihedral w/ finger crack, past another finger crack, to steep jug city
And toward the roofs
Rarely is anything this steep this mellow in the Valley
See those ropes a-hanging? Not your standard slabby Valley moderate
Position: good
Next pitch moves right off of the hanging belay over beautiful features on an exposed face. If I remember right one of the crux sections is in this pitch. The bolts are tightly spaced
At the end of this traverse you make some pulls and gain the hanging fin. This is a cool feature that is fun to climb
Here's that feature, taken on our way back down
I climb with duct tape on my shoes b/c I know I won't be able to buy another pair (sad face)
After punching up through the fin, clip a comfy belay and gaze right at the crux climbing of the day, maybe a little bit sandbagged at .10a in the topo we used. Could be that features had broken off, or we were just climbing weakly that day. Felt like maybe solid 5.10 sequence instead of .10-
Figure out that crimp-to-mantle sequence (with a bolt at your waist) and you're off to the next anchor
Mantle!
From this next anchor you can go left to the notch and traverse back right (5.7, as Adam's doing in this pic), or pull hard straight above the bolts (5.11?)
On Jack's eastern side, a 5.9 dihedral with clean movement leads to a bolted chimney that spits you out on a killer pinnacle summit.
Looking down on Pat from Jack's flat-table summit:
Thanks to the FA'ists, we got to rap the pieces in the foreground instead of the piece in the background. Thanks!
Oh yeah!
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 Credit: le_bruce |
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