Boomers Story

Boomers Story is a good free route, and if you just do the first five pitches, I think most would bump it up a notch to the "great" category. We followed the cleanest and most straightforward variations we saw, and I think if you spent some time cleaning some dirt out of the cracks left of pitches 1 and 3, you could straighten the curves and make this rig even better. The highlight of the route is pitch 2, a super-clean, super-tech, and super-aesthetic corner system you can see from the ground. It's the kind that makes the angels sing in harmony when you look at it. Pitches 3 through 5 are also pretty good, but then the route quality and difficulty goes down a notch or two from there to the top. You can definitely rappel the route from the top of pitch 4 with a single 70 m rope via slung trees, horns, and fixed passive protection (might need new webbing). You might be able to make it down pitch 5, also, but I'm not sure. You certainly could if you fixed a couple of stoppers part way down the pitch.

Here's the pitch by pitch breakdown:

Approach: Scramble up ~50 ft to a large ledge with some pine trees on it. The P2 R-facing corner is a good landmark to shoot for. Also, to the left, look for a thin futuristic 1-pitch splitter off this ledge.

P1: Step right into a 5.8 wide crack in a left-facing corner. After ~25 ft, mantle out and step right on ledgy ground. Climb up and left via hand cracks behind flakes. Belay on a large ledge with a slung constriction. 5.8, ~60 ft.

P2: The biz. Step left, boulder up past two pretty crappy pins, get a rest, and then fire the thin corner above. Expect tech-9 stemming and sinker nut placements. The stems themselves are stable and let you place gear, but moving up, well that's a different story. After about 80 feet, when the difficulty backs off, switch to a crack system on the right. Eventually, step left around a bulge to a belay in an alcove. 5.12+/13-, 110 ft.

P3. Climb up and right out of the alcove on gritty rock (5.9+ slightly run) toward a crack. Pull a committing bulge that suddenly speeds up the pump clock. Continue up the shallow right facing corner to another ledge belay. 5.11, 100 ft.

P4. Get your legs ready for one more short section of thin stemming in the R-facing corner (5.12-) to gain a widening crack. About 30-40 feet up, cut left around a bulge on big face holds (really fun) to a L-facing corner. Follow the corner up to a large ledge. 5.12-, 90 ft.

P5: Continue up the left-facing corner. It starts thin, but you can use a wide crack on the right wall. Pull the roof at the top of the corner, squirm up through a short wide section, and belay at a tree visible from the bottom of the pitch. This pitch looks like it's covered with slippery lichen, but it doesn't really feel that slippery. 5.11-, 115-130 ft.

P.5-6: The route becomes much less engaging at this point. Still fun, but much slabbier and with grittier rock. There are probably numerous ways to continue up from here. We combined pitches 5 & 6 with a little bit of simulclimbing. Climb up and right via 5.7 grooves with hand cracks in the back. Above, cut slightly left to belay at a decent-sized tree on the right side of a large ledge. 5.9+/10-. 230 ft.

P. 7-10: We combined these into two pitches with some simulclimbing. From the tree belay, traverse down and left ~100 ft on an easy ledge to a large R-facing corner system. Climb the corner and continue to angle up and right via cracks and ledges to the top. 5.8, 500 ft.

Descent: From the top, hike down the standard descent gully with one single rope rappel near the bottom.

Left of Becky Routes and right of Mountaineers Route. Look for striking right-facing corner about 100 feet up.

1 set stoppers (extra ~3-7, selected brass optional), 2-3x tiny cams to green camalot, 2x red and gold camalot, single blue #3 and grey #4 camalot. 13-15 QDs and slings.