Larsen Aid Route

It goes clean!

No need to bring a hammer, pitons, or hooks.

This is a wonderfully steep, aesthetic, and historic aid line on the west side of Trail Lake Pinnacle. It was first climbed by Joe Larsen in 1971, and you can still read the original entry in the summit register! In those days, it was probably climbed mostly or entirely on piton aid. I made the presumed first clean aid ascent on June 14, 2018. Cam hooks are not exactly clean aid on sandstone, so I did not use any pins or hooks at all. In my opinion, nailing or cam-hooking this route is no longer worth the damage it causes.

To begin the ascent, find the obvious crack/seam on the west face just right of Mini Moses' bolt line. Start aiding this crack, then make some loose free moves through the white band. Beware loose blocks in this section. From a large ledge, aid a right-slanting, extremely thin crack through the molasses-colored face, then aid the wider, drastically left-angling crack below a roof. You will pass a fixed #1 BD cam here. When the crack turns vertical, the terrain eases and offers passage to the summit.

Cleaning the route (if your belayer isn't following) may prove just as tricky as climbing it....the rappel anchors are not positioned to give a good angle to reach your pro.

This is the complete crack about 10-20 feet climber's right of the bolt line on Mini Moses on the southwest face of the pinnacle. It wanders below the white band, then trends slightly right and then sharply left.

Since this route now goes clean, and it is sandstone that scars easily, there is no need to hurt the perfect cracks with further nailing or hooking. The recommended clean rack is:

doubles of cams .3-1 plus singles of cams 2, 3

1 set of nuts

1 set of tricams

1 set of HB offsets

1 set of micro stoppers

1 set of ballnuts (recommended, not required)

For historic purposes only, the small placements above used to be replaced with a couple LAs and/or a camhook. The camhook is not clean aid in sandstone, and is adequately replaced by modern micro-stoppers and ball-nuts.