Double Ought (00) - 5.8

Nice route once you find it. I felt that the moves were all pretty reasonable but the pro was mostly small and fiddly, although safe overall. Wouldn't be as easy for a newer 5.8 leader to really sew up as many of the other routes, plus there was some suspect rock near the bulgy crux. It's the kind of route that feels easy if you aren't aware that some of the quartzite crystal clusters you are tempted to really crimp may be only loosely attached. That with the smaller slightly sparser gear make it just a bit more serious for an 8. The roof near the top (aim right as you get close to the smaller tree) was pretty easy but the only gear I could get that would protect a fall well was a very small nut - maybe a ball nut would work well there too? Too small even for a double 00 tcu! May be possible to get something larger in the wet convoluted crack below the roof too...

At the time of this posting there was no set of shuts to rap from (as mentioned in the description) but a cord (very tight!) with a couple biners around a mid-sized boulder about 10 feet right and about 10 feet back from the edge. We added some webbing and a ring to help back up this rap anchor. I think a 60m will get you back to the gully if you angle hard left back up the gully and have good rope stretch. A 70m or two ropes might be a safer bet. There is also a set of bolts with only webbing as a sort of sketchy anchor for the first bit of Hodadical Master. Maybe rings there too but I couldn't tell.

Note that the route ends below a GIANT roof with one hard bolted route and another hard trad line. The Kelly guide topo sort of shows it ending out right of these but it's actually right under them on a very large platform.

Start is a bit hard to find, but it's a thin looking corner that looks harder than 5.8 and doesn't look like it has gear - the pieces are there but just small. Be solid with small and creative gear and bring a lot of yellow alien/master cam/whatever to .75 BD size pieces for best effect. I don't think I used anything bigger than .75 until I built my belay anchor.

I'd probably call it just slightly less safe than G since you end up about 5 feet over small slightly dubious gear in a few places.

Fun route. I found the lower section had one big chunk of suspect rock, but that was easy to climb around. Crux was well protected.

Good Route

very small pro at the start

Start at the only (relatively) flat spot on the scramble/approach to hanging garden. Double rap anchor is fairly rusted.