Bring on the Christians

Forgive me in advance, but I’m writing this many years after I was on it, and I have little memory of the climbing and have had to resort to the 1985 Lemmon guide and eyeballing the route from below.  But seeing that some of the other “Bring on” routes have been posted, and knowing there are some that rely exclusively on MP for a guide, I thought I’d post it so it doesn’t completely fade into obscurity.  Who knows, the route actually might be good.Start 20 feet left of Histo in a broken right-facing flake.  From its top, traverse left to a gently overhanging shallow dihedral (the dihedral is now shared with Life and Transfiguration).  Above the dihedral, for the original line, diagonal left to low angle rock and work up and right to a bulge.  Turn this and belay under an obvious prow-like roof from a bolt and unlikely nuts.  Another, almost certainly better option, is to belay from the fixed anchors for the first pitch of Bring on the Lemons, and climb the second pitch from there.  The second, crux pitch traverses right from under the prow and thrutches past two pins (one of the pins appears to be supplemented by a bolt) to easier ground and the top of the North Fin.Now the somewhat interesting stuff, at least to this grey hair.  Steve Grossman and John Jurashek did the FA of the first pitch in 1984, and for reasons lost to time, abandoned the line.  Likely in the spirit of friendly rivalry — and probably because the 1985 guide was about done and there was an arms race to do FAs — Brad and I scooped in and did the second pitch.  On the same day I believe, Ray Ringle and Paul Davidson were putting up Rooting for the Lions — I’m not sure who named which first — but let’s just say we were firmly in our counterculture phase at that time.Four years later, Jim Waugh came down from Phoenix and upstaged our glory by not only doing the “prow-like roof” that our route avoided but adding a different, likely better first pitch and naming it Bring on the Lemons (5.12-), for which the 2015 guide (SQLIII) gives more stars. About the same time Charlie Rollins, another uber talented climber of which I was jealous, put up Bring on the Billionaires (5.11) that climbed another better line to the left of our route.  And in 2016, EFR put up Bring on the Atheists (5.11) to the right of Jim’s route, which already appears way more popular than the other "Bring on" routes.  Just this year, in 2021, realizing that the first pitch Christians never gets done because of its traversing nature and suspect rock, I helped EFR bolt Life and Transfiguration and another sport route to the right, thereby assuredly rendering the first pitch of Christians

at best a historical footnote. The second, much better pitch still beckons though.

Starts in the right-facing broken dihedral just a few feet left of the bolt line of Bring on the Lemons.

Standard Lemmon trad rack.