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Peak Mountain 3

Left Eyebrow to North Face

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Description

Combining these two routes forms a classic line up the north-ish side of Sugarloaf on great rock. I've posted this as 5.6 to be consistent with the included portions of Left Eyebrow and North Face. I suspect most will feel like it is 5.7.

Disclaimer: Rather than including this as a Sugarloaf 'route', my personal preference would be to simply indicate on the route Left Eyebrow where and how to transition to North Face. However, the powers that be preferred I use the 'route' feature of MP to describe this transition.

P1 & P2: Climbed as per Left Eyebrow, ending at a gear belay once you run out of rope on the excellent, continuous hands-to-fist crack.

P3: Continue up the remaining crack but step onto the right face before the bush (i.e., "small, left-leaning spruce tree" per North Face). Head up past an over-large chicken head for a total of ~35m to a nice ledge and belay. This ledge takes a couple large hexes for a belay anchor and is essentially a large notch in the bottom of a right-facing dihedral that continues up. See note below.

P4: Essentially, you are already on North Face. And you have a choice:

a) continue ~straight up (maybe slightly left) on easy run-out terrain to the bivouac ledge bolts; b) or step right out of the large notch and then climb up a right-facing corner. Eventually step right onto a smaller right-facing corner or irregular flake (initially detached) until can take an easy ~20 foot traverse left to the bivouac ledge bolts.

At the bivouac ledge bolts, I prefer to clip one and continue up. But rope drag could become an issue if you came up via 'P4b' above and short-sling'd a bolt.

P5 thru P8: Summit via the remainder of North Face.

Note: The below image by Johnny Gann is taken at or very near the above end-of-pitch-3 large notch. And the leader in the photo has gone the 'P4a' way and is near where one clips a bivouac ledge bolt on North Face.

Crossover pitch from the Left Eyebrow route to the North Face Route.

Location

For the start, see Left Eyebrow.

Protection

See Left Eyebrow and North Face.

Also, for P1 of Left Eyebrow, I tend to want to have two or three cams equivalent in size to BD C4 #0.3 as well as the smallest Trango ball nut for P5 - slightly above the ring piton which is also girthed at its' neck with a narrow sling.