Black Starr Chimney

This has easy chimneying from start to finish.

If you choose to face the back of the chimney on the first move, a good hand jam on the left side of a round boulder offers great moves onto the lower blocks that are in the back. These blocks can be climbed for another ten feet before you ever have to put your feet up against the chimney wall...but who wants to do that?

Go ahead and start out with what ever chimney technique you are comfortable with, and continue the whole way up. Keep your back on the right side wall, there are plenty of opportunities for gear on the left sidewall. It's only about thirty-five or forty feet to the chockstone on top.

Exit the chimney on the left side of the chockstone and take a moment or two to enjoy the view of the Central Rocks, Nautilus, and Holdout.

Then wipe the bat guano off your hands....

Black Starr is a three foot wide chimney about sixty feet to the right of

Pooh Corner

. It is littered with huge rocks in the back and has an easily distinguished triangular chockstone at its top.

Scramble up to the mouth of the chimney, and belay from the huge ledge that is about even with the chains on the first pitch of

Pooh Corner

.

You could rap off of the ring on the chockstone, but it would be a tight squeeze. You would be better off scrambling down up and over to the left.

Hexes and cams up to a couple of inches can be placed in the cracks running all over the left hand side. There are a couple of runners with a ring thrown over the horn of the chockstone to set up a top rope.