Icarus

This is a fantastic, sustained climb up golden granite with some stunning cracks on it. It’s among the best alpine rock we’ve ever found. Like really, really, really ridiculously good.

We’ll stop raving about it now and let the pictures do it justice.

This is a probable FA: like many FAs in the Winds, we found an old piton high on the route  (below the roof on Pitch 8). If you know the story behind the piton, we’d love to hear it.

Pitch 1: (5.10+ 150 feet)

Climb a low angle R facing corner 20’ to a small ledge. Step right from the ledge, and up past a bolt (hard to see from below) into a R facing dihedral. Climb this to a large block that resembles an elephant’s trunk. Climb R around the trunk; at the top of the trunk, traverse the face R past a bolt to a small ledge. Climb up past a couple more small ledges to a bolted belay below the base of the Eclipse Crack.

Pitch 2: The Eclipse Crack (5.11 190 ft)

Step up and right from the belay to the right angling crack.  Fight your way into and up the first 40’ of the crack (5.11). After 40’ the difficulty eases; milk 150’ of prime hand-sized splitter to the top. Save your #3s or #4 for the last few feet.

From the top of the crack, head up and slightly left to a belay at the base of a splitter finger crack.

Pitch 3: (5.7 100 ft)

Move right from the belay along a 3rd-4th class ledge system, mantle up the ledges, and head back left to the base of the dihedral.

Alternately, we think that the splitter tips crack above the belay goes, at mid/hard 5.12 with some cleaning. Get after it! There are two loose chockstones near the top of the pitch that should be trundled.

Pitches 4 and 5: (5.11+ 210 feet)

Climb the dihedral. Jamming, then liebacking, then underclinging as it leans right at the top.  SUPER GOOD.  We belayed at the #3-4 camalot pod about halfway up, but if you’re a hardman you can link these in one pitch. There is a bolted anchor around the corner at the top of the dihedral. Many (5) 0.4 camalots were helpful for the upper section.

Pitch 6: (5.10+ PG-13 120 feet)

Heads up on this pitch. The first 30 feet have tricky pro and tenuous climbing. Totems are helpful, and take your time placing good gear. We’ve whipped a few times on it and it was safe.

Continue up the dihedral above the belay. Step right around a block, then straight up easier ground to a flake/trunk feature. Pass two bolts and climb this to a bolted belay on a slab.

Pitch 7: (5.11- 60 feet)

Clip a bolt above the belay, then step far right and climb the slab near the arete past the bolts. At the overlap, step slightly left, then back right around the edge of the roof (5.11). Belay at a small ledge at the start of the finger crack.

Pitch 8: (5.8 80 feet)

Continue straight up an easier crack to a grassy ledge. Watch out for some dubious rock at about 60 feet. These sharp and hollow flakes are easily avoided by stepping left. Pitches 7 and 8 can be linked (recommended).

Pitch 9: (5.10+ 120 feet)

Climb straight up 20 feet and pull through a steep six-foot-tall overlap (5.10+). Eight feet above the overlap, escape right via a hand traverse on a thin crack that takes good gear (5.10+). Trend up and left after the hand traverse, and do not try to climb out the easy-looking gully to the right (death blocks loom above). Instead, pick your way through the remaining overlaps up and left to the top. We ended up tunnelling left under a large block before the mantle top-out.

Descent: Walk off on easy (class 2) terrain, either to the east or to the west. If you left gear at the base, walking off to the east is shorter.

Cirque of the Sun. This is slightly outside the cirque proper, on the NNW facing buttress on the E side of the Cirque. It’s about 0.25 miles east of Thunder Child.

If coming from the Cirque or below, locate the climb by identifying the massive golden dihedral of pitches 4 and 5. Hike up talus to the base; you’ll know you’re there when you see the splitter Eclipse P2 crack.

If coming from above and to the East, you’ll see the Eclipse crack as your first landmark.

This climb is mostly north facing and fairly cold. It gets a few hours of sunlight in the late afternoon.

We used doubles from small to #3 camalot, one #4, nuts, plus triples in #1 and #2, 4x BD 0.75 and 0.5, and 5x BD 0.4. We found singles in totems black-red to be very helpful (these are included in the quantities above). You could skip the #4 if you feel good on hand cracks/wide hands on pitch 2. You can take less than we did in the fingers sizes if you’re solid on 11+ liebacking.

If you’re thinking about doing the P3 finger crack variation, we think it takes a lot of BD 0.1 and 0.2s and similar.