Hoop Dreams

I rope soloed this route, so the description, gear, rating, etc reflect that. I gave it a Grade II rating, though a small team familiar with bad rock could climb this much faster than myself having to do all the work associated with rope soloing.

Anywho, this route heads up the right side of Sheep Canyon, left of Kimchi Ridge, past Sheep Canyon Spire. The terrain is kinda complicated looking, but really if you go to the base of the headwall and go up the right side on the easy looking slabs below Sheep Canyon Spire, the climbing is obvious. Go too far right and you'll be in some class 3 looking super loose gully. To the left is much steeper and often difficult to protect ground. Follow the best line up.

P1: ~100ft easy slab to tree anchor

P2: ~200ft+ past Sheep Canyon Spire to tree anchor in low-angle slab/mini dihedral thing

P3: ~100ft up right facing dihedral with easy slab

The two 'cruxes':

1. To the right of Sheep Canyon Spire, a 10ft long section of kinda insecure 5.8ish.

2. Start of last pitch, 5.7ish up a right facing dihedral then moving right over easy slab with crappy fall potential.

Be careful of loose rock, especially at belays. I got rid of a lot of more dangerous blocks (usually on purpose), but the whole place is very loose.

FWIW, a 5.8 here is different from a 5.8 elsewhere due to the loose rock. It's a little more mental. Same gymnastic level.

This route is in Sheep Canyon, on the north face of Ontario Peak. Hike up Icehouse Canyon Trail. You'll notice on your map that you so thoughtfully brought with you that the trail is on the north side of the creek. Hike for a while and you'll cross the creek and find yourself on the south side of the creek. Right when you cross the creek, you'll see the remains of an old cabin on the right. Hike straight through these ruins and into the obvious canyon in front of you, slightly left. Hike up that canyon (some 4th class-ish). Go way up into you can't follow the canyon proper anymore. You're now at the bottom of the rapps for the Sheep Canyon Headwall (canyoneering route). Look straight up and you should be able to see the Sheep Canyon Spire up there, which is a bigass flake just sticking up. You're going to climb straight up the fun easy slab in front of you and go right of the Spire.

-Single rack to #3, with Wild Country Zeroes and BD X4's coming in very handy as always. Brought half set of DMM alloy nuts, only placed one nut.

-70m rope

-Lotta slings, some trees up to 2ft diameter.

-Helmet