canmoron's Logbook (23 ascents)

Once again, failed to send pitch 2 clean. Maybe next time. Incredible route. Bring lots of purple/green camalot sized cams for "the corner".

Another fine Tuolumne classic.

This route is one of the finest on the continent. The only route I've done of comparable quality is Sunshine Crack in the Bugaboos.

The Incredible Hulk is an amazing peak, but I felt this route was slightly over-rated in terms of quality. Some of the belays are on big, detached features. Still a good route though. We went car-to-car using mountain bikes to reduce the approach time - you can ride at least a mile up to the Wilderness boundary. I would definitely bring a double set of cams to 3".

We approached easily via the Propeller Cairn since the Bypass Glacier was pretty much gone and the North Glacier looked too scary to cross under. Lower buttress is overall quite mossy/slabby and up to 5.10a. Starts on a blocky arete with (initially) clean cracks. Descended via Crossover and down memorable, blackfly-infested bushwhacking. No ice axe or mtn. boots needed right now. No water available anywhere on the buttress.

Helicopter from Petersburg can take 2 climbers and gear. Total cost return is ~$1,000.
We found the route in very dry conditions which no doubt made our ascent more straightforward. 15 hours camp to camp.
A long, enjoyable ridge climb on mostly excellent rock. The views are spectacular, 6,500' down the north side and 3,500' down the south side!

See Atkinson/Piche guide for detailed beta. I found pitches 1 and 3 to be easier than the GB says, more like .10- and with short cruxes. You can leave your #5 camalots at the top of pitch 2 and get them on the way down. They are not needed higher up. I recommend belaying just below the crux roof on p7, otherwise the leader could splat on the low-angled slab if they whip. This makes it a 10m pitch but it works best that way. Pitch 8 is probably undergraded at 5.9 in the GB. It's more like 5.10b. There are two gear belays: at the top of p6 and at the top of p10 (small-medium cams/nuts). The rest are fixed bolt anchors that are used for rapping the route. For p10 I would bring four #4 camalots. Kneepads are nice for the p2 OW and also for all the semi-hanging belays.

Our party of three felt the .10d pitch was very hard - more like .11b, and the "crux" .11a pitch felt "easy" - more like .10+. Maybe we missed something on the .10d pitch?

Here are some notes fresh from our ascent ~1 week ago:
Flying in as a party of four will save you money.
The lower part of the route to the bivy ledge is pretty average (dirty and loose), but the upper headwall is immaculate.
The approach takes 1-1.5 hours from Fairy Meadows. The route dries out relatively quickly in good weather, and we were able to free climb right from the bottom.
The first 3 pitches have fixed ropes and are the last pitches to dry out. Of the 8 parties that successfully climbed the LFT during the week I was in there, most failed on their first attempt. Of the failed parties, all used the fixed ropes on their subsequent successful ascent. Most fail because they run out of either time or energy. The first 3 pitches and the upper headwall pitches are very sustained and you can't run up them, despite their moderate grade. Start early, bring lots of food and plan on a very long day. Overall, expect an outing of Scenic Cruise or Steck-Salathe proportions.

Gear: double set of cams to 3" plus a 4" piece, two sets of nuts.

Descent: Many double rope raps. The rap route mostly follows a line to the climber's right of the ascent route. I strongly recommend switching to single rope raps for the bottom 3 pitches, because everyone gets the knot stuck rapping pitch 3.

After reaching the bowl at the top of the DSB at 11:15am, we thought for sure we would get back to our camp w/o a bivy. Wrong! From the edge of the bowl, we spent 10+ additional hours givener before we finally resigned ourselves to a bivy 3 pitches below the summit. The difficulty may have been somewhat harder than described in the guidebook because of the amount of snow and therefore the need to change from rock shoes to mountain boots several times. In any case the regular DSB felt like cake (90% 5.7 or easier), but the rest of the ridge to the summit did not. Fortunately it wasn't a very cold night ~30F and windless, so we didn't shiver too badly. An incredible sunrise the next morning helped us get psyched to continue to the summit. The SW Couloir descent was cake and took ~4 hours summit to camp. We needed crampons in places since we were descending early in the day. It might go with just mtn. boots/axe if it was in the sun.

Ortenberger/Jackson topo is quite good for regular DSB, as is the topo from the Teton Rock CD. For routefinding purposes, it's worth noting that some of the first 6 pitches are >60m but once you are on the headwall they are mostly 30m-ish.