Hang Nine

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P1 is an arching hand crack and worth doing when in the area. Starts crumbly, to a short wide bit (optional #5 cam), then some fun & sustained, yet awkward crack moves, kinda chimney like at times. Clip the chains & lower down to a nice ledge with a bolted anchor. 2nd cleans and both rap from that ledge. 5.10b

If doing the entire climb, clip the chains and aid past a couple of bolts before reaching another set of chains. From here, make a free move to the left. You’ll see two bolts, one with no hanger, and a #4 sized lieback crack in the corner. Clipping this bolt or a cam in the corner will suck your rope into a super sharp corner, I’d advise against it. Make the easy lieback up to the small ledge under the massive roof and belay here. 5.10 A2

P2- climb the overhanging wall up to the roof crack using the bolt ladder. This avoids some suspect blocks. Traverse the roof crack using mostly big cams. Someone stronger could probably free this, but we did it at C2. When exiting the roof, be sure to clip the directional bolt, as it keeps your rope from getting sucked into the crack. Continue up the crack system, aid or free, to another bolted belay below a chimney. A2

P3- climb the awkward corner crack up to the chimney, where you’ll pass two bolts before you reach a big block. Surmount the block and clip the fixed carabiner. This keeps your rope from getting sucked into the block. You'll need to clip both strands of your rappel rope through this on the way down to avoid getting it stuck, very important. Once past the block, easy but dirty climbing leads to the final bolt belay. 5.9+

This climb stays in the shade for much of the day and has excellent belay ledges. The exposure will take your breath away at times. The aid is pretty straight forward.

Descent - to get down, make a single rope rappel, clipping both strands into the fixed carabiner to avoid sticking your rope. This gets you to the top of pitch 2. 60m rope is fine. From here, we made a double rope rappel on 2 70s all the way to the ground, with most of it being out in space, wild! 2 60s might get you all the way down, if not, there is a rap station on a small ledge directly below the first set of chains for the first pitch.

It’s up in the gully so you’ll have to either solo or rope up for the dirty gully scramble with a couple 5.6 moves.  There’s a nice ledge up in the gully with bolts. From here you can do Hang Nine, Lazy Boy Ledge and The Dragon. You could also climb The Looking Cack or Jam Crack and scramble up to the ledge. Stem Cell is also in the area.

We sewed it up with this rack:

Singles: .5, .75, 5, 6

Doubles: 1

Triples: 2, 3, 4

A dozen or so draws and slings

One 60m rope with the lower down to ledge anchor if only doing pitch 1.  Two ropes if doing the whole climb.