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Peak Mountain 3

The Red Gully

FA Ament and Dalke, early 60's?
CREATED 
UPDATED 

Description

The crux of this route is not breaking off the holds...

Reach the eye-bolt at the top of the West Bench, as accessed from any of the interior routes below it or from a scramble from the outer wall up to it. Set a belay here, and climb out and left for some distance passing a horizontal hand-crack, and proceeding inward past a fixed aluminum pin (with broken eyelets) and into a dark red, right-facing corner with trashy rock and a small ledge to stand on.

Climb up this corner until it ends, then work up and left onto a slab and onto the summit, to an eye-bolt belay.

If you are feeling frisky, from the top of the dihedral, you can continue directly upward through a bulge with a sloper, a few tiny edges and a small-downward pointing flake for holds. This felt like solid 5.10 and is certainly a dangerous fall potential- I did this on TR and my partner subsequently aborted a similar attempt, siting the noisy flake as his cause for that.

The route has some OK moves, but as a lead it's a bomb- too much stress over bad rock. Maybe 1 star as a TR.

Location

This route is on the upper half of the inside East-facing side of the West Wall of the amphitheatre. It climbs the trashy red dihedral that starts level with the top of the notch on the West Bench.

Protection

A standard light rack- most of it won't be any good anyway.