Ascent Notes for: Wings & Stings - 5.7 Average Rating : 3.75/5

Easiest route on hammer dome. Look out for the ants.

Introduced a new climber to multi-pitch here. Great climb. TR'd "Squeaks" and "Shrieks" on the way down.

Older topo shows bolted belay in middle of lieback pitch; these are no longer there.
You can traverse along the top to get to the rap anchors over Smokescreen. (May have to do a single facemove that can be hairy depending upon your comfort level on friction.)

Wet bailed after 1 pitch

Very nice. Clean crack. Looks intimidating but did go at 5.7 as billed I think. Going out on the face for the start means it's a little ways before you can place pro, possible pendulum. Leader also needs to think about the follower and place plenty of pro in the lie back crack to prevent too much of a pendulum for them. Too bad this pitch is not part of a longer climb.

I say face in, my wife says face out?

Simul climbed most of it and did it in one long pitch with a 70m. The long sustained dihedral left me with a serious tweak in my back. I think the crux was finding a comfortable position to rest my back. Sustained at 5.7 I must say, but not any harder than that. A beautiful feature and a must do on Hammer.

This was a great first lead on trad. The big lieback dihedral had a lot of lichen and crap in the crack but my second cleaned it out as much as possible on his way up. It was a fun climb. Right after the dihedral, I setup a belay anchor on a few cams to bring up the second, per the advice of my friend who had done the route before. I probably could have went further up around the corner to anchor into bolts (there would have been rope drag) but the cams worked just as well. The climbing was great, but that one self-made belay station scared me the most....don't fall, don't fall, don't fall. He didn't fall and we did good. I wondered if it was really 5.7 relative to other climbs I've done both outside and inside. Seemed more like a 5.8-5.9...but maybe that's just my first-lead fear factor talking.

My first experience on a multi-pitch.

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P2, w/ seth. Fun liebacking which becomes increasingly strenuous as your calves begin to burn from joyful slabbiness.