takeme's Logbook (97 ascents)

I loved this route and will definitely do it again. It's a great adventure and it gets you waaay up there. Despite a fair amount of choss, almost all the climbing is really fun, and the route consistently gets steeper and more spectacular the higher you go. It feels like climbing a mountain rather than simply a big cliff. We both thought the offwidth move by the tube chock was the route crux--I barely eeked through on TR. It has great pro though (but the route as a whole is pretty serious). Took us just under 9 hours to do the climb, with about 1.5 for the approach and a little over an hour for the hike back to camp. This would be a good climb to do if you've done the Scenic Cruise and want to do another grade V 5.10 in the Black, just don't come expecting the same high quality rock.

Incredible route, especially the last 2 pitches. I slipped off once following the last pitch. The rappell was absolutely terrifying...30 feet out from the wall, many hundreds of feet above the ground. I couldn't look down!

I climbed the Diamond 6 times in summer 2005; this was the final time and by far my worst day up there. I felt out of sorts from the start--even the 5.9 pitches felt really hard for some reason. Once the sun left the face our fingers never warmed up and I ended up completely aiding the crux. It would be a reach for me to free anyway but it would have been nice to at least put in an honest attempt. We rapped from the top of the crux pitch as snow was falling by then.

Our intention was to climb the Obelisk, but Pervertical was clogged with traffic. Partway up the crux pitch we traversed left into the upper part of Pervertical's 3rd pitch and attempted to get over to the Obelisk, only to find a party just starting up it. So, we finished on Pervertical, and then the 5.11c pitch of Ariana (which was actually first ascended as Curving Vine). The first 2.5 pitches are very high quality and I would like to come back and do the whole crux pitch someday, although the link-up we did was also great.

Awesome pitch--a great variety of crack climbing, and also some liebacking, stemming, and a wierd roof. I led this in early spring and wasn't up for it (my first 5.11 lead in about 8 months at that point, which was probably a mistake), but with some other hard leads under my belt I felt pretty solid on it in August.

Great route; pitch 3 (2nd above big ledge) is especially fantastic. We rapped after 5 pitches, avoiding the final weird 5.10 face pitch. This was due to my hangover and also the fact that of the 4 or so apparent ways to go, we had no idea which one to take, so we basically chickened out.
Oh, and pitch 5, the overhanging handcrack, has good jams but is a wee bit strenuous for the 10a rating!

This has gotta be the best 5.6 I've ever done. Consistently astounding. We simul climbed or soloed most of it, so it went pretty fast which was good because the weather was not.

Fun route--we did this after doing Wolf's Tooth and did the K crack variation, which was nice.

Fun day on the Diamond--this is a really nice link-up. We were intending to do Black Dagger but Pat wasn't feeling that great (although he climbed fine) so we took the easier finish. As it turned out the Dagger was wet (we couldn't tell from below) so it worked out well.

This is an awesome, truly sustained crack climb. I had toproped it 4 or 5 years ago when I lived in Estes, but didn't remember anything except that it was hard and involved finger jams. So on my "alzheimer's redpoint" attempt, I got to within 1 or 2 moves of the jugs at the top, was super pumped, then blew a clip (of a piece I probably shouldn't have placed), freaked out, and grabbed the piece. Oh well. It was still a heck of an experience to lead it.