The Irregular Route

This route winds its way up the central spur on Sugarloaf Peak's west face. The first who knows how many feet are the approach up a scree gully. Try to stay on the bigger rocks so you're not fighting your way up. The gully eventually splits. Go up the spur that splits the two gullies, and take this onward and upward. Lotta class 4 scrambling with two 70m pitches with some 5.8-9 moves in there, depending on exactly where you go. Pretty neat experience overall.

I unroped when I got close to the top of a sub-peak or whatever you call it on the spur, where lots of Oak grow. Scrambled the rest of the way up the ridge, past a notch, to the summit. The summit is guarded by tons of very thick Buckthorn, so you'll probably want to find a way around it. I went straight through like a G and am covered in bleeding cuts. G-g-g-g unit!

Park near the bridge just south .4 miles south of the turn for Icehouse Canyon, at the base of the west face.

You see that gate on the east side of the road/gate? Go to that, then go straight up the hill and gain the scree gully on the right. If you look at this in Google Maps, it's obvious.

The pro is good, for once. You could probably get by with a single rack. A few handcracks on the route so bring some appropriate pieces. This being the San Gabes with broken blocks, you'll have a lot of parallel sided cracks and strange wavy features inside cracks, so cams are the way to go. I don't find myself placing nuts at all on most trips.

A 70m rope was ideal for my soloing setup.