Yellow Jacket

Climb an easy slab to the base of the vertical flake/crack. Climb the fantastic 5.10- crack to a stance below a roof. SQLIII shows turning the roof, however, I didn't see any pro up there so I took the obvious, and really fun sloper hand traverse left under the roof into Squeeze Easy. From here another 100 feet of much easier climbing led to the top, but rope drag was hellacious. If I did the hand traverse option again I'd just belay on the ledge at the end of it and do another easier pitch to the top.

There didn't seem to be many other high quality routes in the area (The Sting looks high quality but neither of us wanted to tackle a Steve Grossman 11+). But this enjoyable crack route makes the short walk to the cliff worthwhile for the whimsical Mt. Lemmon crack enthusiast. I thought it was a strong two stars.

Yellow Jacket is on the right side of Lizard Rock's North Face, the middle of three parallel crack systems just before you reach the right end of the face. The leftmost crack is Squeeze Easy, 5.6, and the rightmost is The Sting, 5.11+. The route starts with an easy slab to reach the vertical crack. SQLIII shows turning a roof at the top of the crack, but it is also possible to hand traverse under the roof.

To descend, we walked to the top of Lizard Rock and found an anchor at the top of a bolted route to rappel from (belaying down to the anchor). This anchor was a bit old, and rappelling from a tree might be a better option--there are many in the vicinity. There also appears to be an easy 5th class downclimb, but it was wet. It would also be possible to walk off the northern end of the cliff, but this would be a long walk back to the base of the route.

All gear. Single set should be adequate for those "solid at the grade," but extras in 0.5 to 1 camalots were helpful. I placed a 4 in the obvious pod but it really isn't necessary.