Mental Thrillness

I saw this section of face between the two old trad lines and was thinking a sport route could be punched up between them. I top roped all of the options and this one kept the line right between them. The steep handcrack at the start is a little funky but has some good jams. Where the crack ends a good horizontal and pro allows you to move right a tad and grab thin holds in the white band and make a long reach up to a decent horizontal. You could also move farther right but then you are on Physical Therapy. I hand railed left to a good stopper at a big hole/flake then moved up to another horizontal. The horizontals are shallow and only about a finger pad deep but gear can be found. I never figured out the gear or exactly where to place it but having climbed worked it on TR I was confident there were decent placements. This made it an interesting lead but one that would be stout as an onsight. The angle means your forearms are on the clock when looking for the placements and what size cams you need. The pump starts to build but the moves are about the same to whee the angle lets off. Once on to low angle stuff work left crossing Andy's Hat to the arete then up to some roof moves at a bolt. Use the ring anchors to lower off. Not Ideal but less likely to be stolen than hooks or biners. You could also use the anchors on Stretch or Stretcher but your second would have to follow it to clean it.This is one of those pieces of rock that just didn't provide a hold that would make climbing the line I did natural. The natural thing to do would have been to make another move right and climb up on to the big ledge/blob then angle right into PT. By using the thin edges in the crystal band it allowed me reach good holds in the horizontal. This made easier to hand traverse left where a good big stopper can be had. The climbing above is a little easier than the thin moves and really good for another 15 feet. Two bolts would have lead people the direction I went but I didn't want to bolt the whole thing especially where it crosses AH. Since few carry a light rack any more I figured those really into gear leads could do it. I right all this down so people can see the thought process I went through when deciding to bolt or not bolt. I might add a couple of bolts some day anyway but for now I leave it as is.

Middle of the wall up the Hand Crack.

Gear to Number #3 camalot double the finger size for the horizontals