Giardia Crack

Giardia Crack is a superb, all natural gear line and a classic medium for Waterfall sports action. The crux involves some powerful moves over the roofy bulge on positive holds. This is one of my favorite pitches on the Left Wall. Always exciting and savory.

This route starts above the obvious little spring that trickles out at the base of the wall, which also explains the name. From the nineties into Y2K climber’s would maintain a small pool to keep thier crag beers somewhat cool, however, while accomplishing the first goal, the residual spring water on the beer cans has made more than a few climber’s sick.

Climb a slightly unpleasant off fist size crack to the roof which has a very thin crack splitting it. Plug in a couple pieces of gear, and get ready to crank out some awesome moves which seem puzzling until you start into it. Continue up the dihedral into a fantastic hands section. After that the crack begins to tighten down again into another little .10+/.11- section which guards the anchors.

Multiple people have ripped their crux gear #.5. Make sure you have some gear in before the roof. See comments below.

Left side above the natural water spring.

Standard