Yosemite Slab

Curiously, this is the only route in Rossiter's guidebook followed by a question mark. I'm not sure if this refers to the name or the rating, but it intrigued me, and since my partner Charles and I were already up there and we had a couple more hours of daylight, we figured we'd get one more route in before heading home.

The first pitch is described as a shallow dihedral, and even from the base of the route you can't see what the crack inside this feature looks like, so it didn't occur to me to bring up anything larger than a #3 Camalot. The first 30-35 feet of the first pitch is sustained 5.9 climbing protected by small to medium stoppers and an occasional micro cam, after which you pull left a few feet into the true shallow dihedral, the bottom of which would have taken a #4 Camalot. Instead of a crack running up the length of the inside of the corner, there's a flared groove that gets progressively more flared, and moss-filled the higher up it goes, lacking any decent protection options. I figured there MUST be some sort of gear placement higher up, so I kept climbing, getting more and more gripped and pumped from the strenuous lieback/pinch (liebacks never were my forte), no gear in sight. After almost 20 feet of this, there looked to be a decent hold about 8 feet higher where I might be able to rest and get a piece in, so I kept moving, hoping I'd make it before losing all my strength. But before I got more than a couple moves higher, my feet popped without warning and I fell, pulling my last piece (the second smallest Alien) 20+ feet below and finally being caught by my next-highest piece (a mid-sized Sentinel Nut), landing upside-down inches from the ground, grass poking through the ventilation holes of my helmet. Moral of the story: if there's a question mark in the guidebook, it means the author probably hasn't climbed it.

Standard rack plus a #4 Camalot, and a couple screamers for the old bolts at the top. Also, strong forearms for the runout lieback on the first pitch.