The Cathedral Spires are closed from March 1 to July 31 for raptor nesting.
BETA PHOTO
Description
To the right of the Center Route on the Cynical Pinnacle is a beautiful, long, hand-sized crack that heads straight up the slab. This is the 3rd pitch of Turf Spreader.
P1. You can begin at the bottom of the gully, looking up 40 feet or so into a no-pro chimney, which Hubbel rates 5.8. We chose pro, and headed around the corner to the right, making our first pitch P1 of the Great Chimney. You can even avoid the chimney by heading up the face (5.8ish), to the bolted anchors.
P2 heads up the 11b roof, which begins with hands and moves smaller and smaller until you get around the corner and discover you'll need some bigger pro. Because of the nature of the roof, we set an anchor as soon as possible around the corner to reduce rope drag.
P3 is the long, 5.8, hand crack. You can break this up into 2 pitches or stretch out the rope. At the top are assorted slings, backed up with a hex.
You can continue up or rap from here.
I'd bring webbing and biners on this route to back up existing anchors. 2 ropes will get you down: one 200' rap down the face from the top of P3; one 100' back to the gully.
P1 just gets you there. P2 and 3 are fantastic.
Protection
Standard rack to #4 Camalot; doubles in hand sizes for the 5.8 crack.
Instead of heading around the corner to the offwidth you can also take the thin left angling crack up to the arete and a beautiful well protected 5.11 face.
Climbed this today. Used Sharpend's guidebook. At the end of the beautiful 3rd pitch handcrack (think high Sierras), we followed the obvious, horizontal crack leading left to the 3rd Belay on Center Route. Rated 10-something, we found it pretty straightforward with the last 15 feet to the dihedral being pretty sustained and exciting.
From here, we headed up the left side 10+ (actually like 9+) handcrack, turned the corner, and finished up the final right-facing dihedral of Wunsch's. Then finally up the bolt ladder. The guidebook said nothing of heading right.
The way we did it, it was 6 pitches and each one was fantastic.
Some thoughts:
-Don't place anything in the 1st pitch chimney until about to exit out the roof. There are two exiting skylights. I'm small...and unless you are much smaller than me, you Will-Not-Fit.
-After turning the roof, belay on small stuff just 3 feet above, or suffer the consequences. Above the roof, it's wide for a bit. We had a #3, 3.5 and 4 Camalot. This seemed fine.
-The pin midway on the traverse wiggled back and forth. It was fine, but just keep an eye on it.
[oops...meant to say - After the crux (2nd pitch) roof, stop to belay right above, not the chimney pitch.]
The fixed gear and all the webbing are gone at the top of P3, the 5.8 crack. There's a new bolt up there with a rap ring, and we added some webbing/link so you have two pieces to rap from.
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