Gladiator

Yeah, this route has an admittedly overly-dramatic name, but we wanted something classic to memorialize what we thought was a great route reminiscent of some of the bold British lines depicted in the mags. Ironically, Gladiator apparently has faded into obscurity, perhaps another victim of Tucson's late-80s sport climbing surge. (EFR in Squeezing II gives it no stars; . . . dude, really?).  We worked this from the ground up, consistent with the ethic just about to be swept aside, figuring the sequence out by taking repeated falls and lowering to a rest. I slightly remember there being a little suspect rock low on the route, but it has cool position, and from what I can recollect, the climbing is not so much burly as tricky and sequential, with height being an advantage.Start up Histo, but break left at the top of the right-leaning, right-facing corner, up a crack toward a face protected by a bolt. Puzzle out the moves above to reach a pin in an intermittent crack and follow weaknesses to the top. (NB, the pin appears to be missing as of 2021, and the phototopo of the line in SQLIII is not accurate.)

Branches off left from Histoplasmosis.

Standard Tucson trad rack.