High Anxiety

A typical Swain route: thin, hard, loose, obscure, and exciting. All the necessary ingredients for an excellent Joshua Tree adventure climb.

Start up an easy crack in a corner to a large grassy ledge about 30 feet, a 5.8 move near the top is fun or hike up to here. Face climb past a very thin splitter crack, pass two well placed bolts, and then face climb past a very thin and hard to protect crack in a corner. At the top, flop onto a large ledge to the right and look for some bolt anchors on the far side.

This route is located a couple hundred feet right (west) and up from Popular Mechanics on the left side of a large, light colored buttress. There is a bolted rappel anchor with modern gear above An Officer and a Poodle, rappel with a single 60 meter rope to the right, watch the end of the rope on this one.

Small brass nuts, set of stoppers, small TCU's, (small offset TCU's may work better in a couple places), light rack of cams to 1", two 3/8" bolts with Leeper hangers are in pretty good shape, bolted anchor/rappel. I didn't have any with me, but the smaller Lowe Ball's or BD C3's might have worked better than brass at the upper crux.