Celtic Cracks

This route is a beautiful line with a several spectacular pitches. The most notable is the shamrock roof pitch which goes out a huge roof. The pitches above the roof in the groove have similar rock and climbing feel as the wide pitches on Crimson Chrysalis minus the bolts. There are no bolts or fixed anchors on the route. The time to climb the route itself is probably an average grade III but with over 1000ft of approach pitches and a very involved descent you will probably be getting a grade V type of effort.

The R rating comes from the wide upper pitches which may be mitigated with wide gear. Anywhere the climbing is difficult the protection is good.

Pitch 1: 5.9 170ft Begin climbing the right side of a small red pillar moving past a small roof on the left. Move right out of the mini-roof into the tan rock and up a mossy crack. Follow this crack up to a small ledge with a bush for the belay.

Pitch 2: 5.8 120-160ft Move up and left from the belay and climb to a long ledge. Traverse on the ledge to the right through bushes to reach the base of a large dihedral with the spectacular sweeping Shamrock roof above. Belay in cracks or continue up to stance in the dihedral above.

(Optional)Pitch 3: 5.10a 80-170ft Climb up the corner using the crack and features on the face. Belay at the last stance before the roof on small ledge or link with next pitch.

Pitch 4: 5.10b 90ft The Shamrock Roof. Climb up the corner and out the spectacular sweeping roof. Belay in good vertical cracks just past the edge of the roof.

Pitch 5: 5.9 200ft Climb straight up past a bush in a dihedral. Just past the bush move up and right on a slightly overhanging wall with big holds turning the outside corner and climbing onto a featured face (5.9). Continue climbing up and right on the face until you meet up with a crack that widens into a chimney (5.6). Belay in a notch.

Pitch 6: 5.8+R 195ft Continue up the chimney/OW and belay at a stance.

Pitch 7: 5.7+R 175ft Climb another long pitch up the chimney/OW to a nice large ledge (a bush can be seen about 25ft above through the crack)

Pitch 8: 5.7+ 205ft Continue up Chimney/OW again until it tops out as a finger crack.

Climb any of the numerous climbs to reach the ledge system atop the slabs.

The route starts just to the right of a striking off-width in red rock. It begins on the right side of an attached red pillar.

Descent: Scramble down the opposite side of the formation into a gulley using a few easy 5th class moves. The gulley requires one single rope rappel from slings on a tree and lots of 4th class scrambles. Once you reach the bottom of the gulley continue east and head down the 2nd obvious gulley to your left or north. Scramble down generally trending left. This will lead you to a narrow gulley with a huge block wedged in it. Squeeze under the block and slide down an unlikely but easy offwidth. You will come out on a ledge with a large forked tree. From here traverse west (left) along a ledge system until you are at large dead tree very close to the wall with rocks stacked around its base. Just before this dead tree carefully scramble down to a medium size pine tree on the left side of the gulley with yellow rap slings. Take a two rope rappel back down to the ledge system (there might be other possibilities for a few single rope raps that would be worthy of exploring). Traverse the ledge to the left (west) to reach the base of the route. Descent from this ledge requires scrambling down the gulley to the east of the sunset slab route and either 2 single rope or 1 double rope rappel from close to the top of Rising Moons.

Standard rack of nuts and a double set of cams up to #6 Friend! Extra cams in the large sizes or a few big-bros could remove the R rating for the upper pitches.