Category Archives: Rock Climbing

Another summer weekend in Colorado, and Mark and I had an intensely renewed desire for low-key fun climbs in Vedauwoo. We managed to convince Doug and Liz to spare some of their over-booked weekend hours to join us at Beehive Buttress on Saturday. Surprisingly, Adam, who has spent a whole summer alpining-it-up (and not dying) in the Tetons agreed to come out with us as well!

There’s pictures from the weekend in the gallery!

As I mentioned in my last post on the area Beehive Buttress is a new, seriously bolted, sport crag north and west of the greater Vedauwoo area. I’ve begun to reconcile the oxymoron of “sport climbing in Vedauwoo” by telling myself that this crag isn’t really in Vedauwoo. It’s so far away, it’s a destination unto itself. Sort of.

Liz started the day with two awesome leads. After her stylish redpoint of the furthest route on the left of the rock, she then led the bulging, overhanging 5.8 on the arrete between the slab and the harder climbs. That girl kicked azz on Saturday. Mark and Adam paired up right off the bat and started leading hard route after hard route.

I worked in on various top ropes and had fun and challenging climbing for the day. Got in some nice pictures, and enjoyed resting in the shade of aspens with dogs and friends. At the end of the day, Mark and I each ticked off 4 routes, and were having a great time. Adam was having so much fun he had begun speaking in a pseduo-French accent between bouts of regaling us with incredible and hilarious tales of Teton-climbing.

“Zee crrrimps! Zay arr soo… what iz zee worrd? Sooo taste-ee! Soo vonder-fool!”

Eventually, the afternoon rolled around and D-Liz and Adam had to head back to the Fort. Mark and I buzzed back over to the Vedauwoo main area and started searching for a camp site. This summer has been the worst for crowded campgrounds along the Front Range that I have ever seen. RoMo is booked solid, Estes is booked each weekend, the Poudre Canyon is full to overflowing with campers, and last weekend Vedauwoo was too. We pulled into an area of campsites we frequent, which had been taken over by a group proclaiming this week was the “Dog Town Vedauwoo Climbing Extravaganza: Vedauwoo Electric Boogaloo.”

We drove up a hill and away from the action. We ended up setting up camp on a hillside beneath some Ponderosa pines. Liv did not like walking on the pine cones, so Mark cleared space under the tarp and dug a little trail to the tent. We built a fire ring on top of a wide flat rock and enjoyed a warm evening in Voo. Not exactly “leave no trace” camping, but Wyoming will quickly and easily erase our presence when the first wild blizzards roll through in September.

Mark and I spent the hike out on Saturday coming up with cute names for this blog post. It could have been “We came, we looked, we turned around,” or “How not to have an Epic: Don’t climb.” Or maybe simply “Be your own worst enemy!”

Pictures from the day are in the gallery.

Mark and I have been planning on climbing the Petite Grepon all summer. A few years ago, we climbed the Spearhead with a friend of ours, and this summer, we felt like we would be able to do a climb like that on our own. So, we spent a few of our weekends climbing long, multipitch routes on Lumpy Ridge in preparation, and last weekend it was go-time. The weather was good, our weekend was free, and it would be the last one that fit those criteria in the foresee-able future. It was now or not this summer. It was time to climb.

Plans started to go awry during the week before. I couldn’t get a campsite anywhere in Estes Park. The whole town was booked. So, Mark and I decided to get up at 3:30a in Fort Collins, drive into the park, hike the 5 mile approach, and be at the base of the climb between 6:30 and 7:00a. Then on Thursday, I burned the crap out of my right leg on some part of the motorcycle. I actually smelled the skin on my leg sizzle. I bandaged it up and just declared that Mark would have to lead the whole route, due to my injury (surprise surprise).

We woke up on time. Got out the door by 4a. Spent 15 minutes reminding the seriously high guys at McDonalds of what they were doing (“Coffee. You were getting me coffee. That’s what you were doing, remember?”). Arrived at the Glacier Gorge trailhead a little later than we wanted, 5:30a. The sun was just rising as we left the car and headed out into the woods.

The hike was steeper than I remembered, but our packs were relatively light, and we kept up a good pace. Our first trouble came at Timberline Falls, where the lake was cascading over the whole cliffline, and filling what might have been a steep section of trail with rushing water. It took us a while to figure out that the sign pointing to the waterfall was not a prank, and we climbed the wet and slippery rocks to Glass pond.

Here our second trouble arrived. We thought Glass Pond was Sky Pond, and became seriously confused. There were many rock spires surrounding us, but none looked like the pictures of the Petite in the guidebook pages we had printed and copied. We wandered around the lake for maybe half an hour, before we discovered that the trail scaled another short cliffline and continued on to what was actually sky pond.

And this was where the final trouble hit us. We stared at the 1000ft spire from the lake and both felt a sickening sinking feeling. It was already 8:30a. Our route choices were 1000 airy feet of 5.8 or 5.9 on loose rock with at least 6 or 7 parties above us. I’ve read many a philosophical mountaineer say “When you look at the mountains, you see your true self.” And, for Mark and I, the cracks in our plans and preparations suddenly became starkly visible.

We were late. We hadn’t climbed a route of this grade in two months, let alone a route of this length. Our trad climbing was slow. My preparation for the exposure was non-existent. We were exhausted already and hadn’t even made it to the base of the rock. We both sat down quietly.

“We’re not climbing this today, are we?” I asked.

“No,” answered Mark.

The mountains are huge and humbling. Thinking about the route all week, and even now when I’m safe at home, I know we could have climbed it. I know it was within our skill level. It was a beautiful, hot day in Estes and the storms didn’t arrive until late. We could have done it. But we really didn’t want to on Saturday morning.

Certainly a lot of it was just fear. I felt so small, so unsure of myself that morning. I felt humiliated that I was so afraid of a climb. Surely we’re “good enough” to do this by now! But I didn’t want to. Not only was I terrified, but the climb didn’t look like any fun. It looked like I’d have to haul our packs and clothes and water up a huge, steep rock, and for what? To see the top? To write a blog post? To brag to my friends? Why were we doing this? Why were we up here?

We sat at the lake and watched climbers work their way up the Petite and the Saber for almost an hour. Then a group of hikers arrived and we decided to head down. We got to enjoy playing in the water at Timberline falls on the way down. I had three blisters by the end of the day. We made it back to the car at about 1:00p.

Maybe we really weren’t ready. Maybe it was just a crisis of faith. Maybe we are burnt out on this type of climbing. All I knew when I got back to the car was that I didn’t want to go back to the National Park for a long time. Mark and I agreed, we want to climb fun cracks, with short approaches, and with good friends. We want low-stress climbing, and easy descents. We want evening campfires and beer. We want to be able to bring our dog with us again. We want to get back to what we love about climbing for a while.

On Sunday morning we got up at 5:30a. We threw the tent in the car, stopped for a fast food breakfast, and were hiking out of the Lumpy Ridge parking lot a little more than an hour later (~6:45a). No, Mark didn’t have a helmet. Yes, we were set on climbing Mainliner (5.9).

There’s a few pictures from the day in the gallery.

Sundance Buttress is a dominating and beautiful formation on the ridge. It is the most distant formation, and the hike to the base is about 3.5 miles long. We buzzed up the trail surprisingly quickly, hitting the base of the wall by 8:30a.

For all of our earliness, for all of our work, we still arrived at the base of our climb second. We were willing to risk Mark’s head because we so desperately wanted to climb this amazing 5-star, fantastically beautiful line. And there was another pair on it already. About halfway up the first pitch. With gear in the wall every 4ft. Not only were they on the route before us, but they were moving slooooow.

We bummed around the rock for a while, starting to consider other routes in the area. Note to self: when hiking out to a remote destination, bring gear for more than one climb. We brought mostly small gear and nuts for Mainliner, which meant many of the long, classic chimney/offwidth climbs on Sundance were just too dangerous for us that day. Most of the thin routes on the wall were harder than Mainliner. The rock was beautiful, and the 1000ft wall was covered in amazing looking lines, but we were a bit stuck.

Eventually, we knew we were wasting time, and we found ourselves at the base of The Guillotine. The hard part, or crux, is just off the ground and easily protected. Mark and I dug deep, and pulled through the 10ft loong flaring thin crack crux. The rest of the pitch went at pumpy 5.9, and our climb was supposed to ease up to the 5.7-5.8 range after this pitch.

When I left the ground, it was at about 10am. There were already large, dark clouds forming in a line reminiscent of a frontal boundary just to our west. Where most faces on Lumpy Ridge face south or south east, and weather is often a surprise, these climbs on Sundance face west, and you are constantly aware of what is coming your way off the continental divide. And on Sunday morning, it did not look good.

I cleaned and climbed the pitch. I took a few hangs in the crux and then one further up the climb. When I reached the belay 100ft up, there was thunder rumbling in the clouds. The idea of continuing our exposed, difficult route, for 6 more pitches, and then do a 5th class down climb, in rain and lightening just seemed idiotic. Mark lowered me down, and then set a bail anchor and rapped off himself.

We packed up as lightening began striking the valley below us and the ridge above us. Rain began sprinkling down, so I packed up the camera and we headed home. As we hiked out, the clouds came and went. Lightening appeared and disappeared. In the end, we were lucky everything worked out the way it did. If we had made it to Mainliner first, or earlier, we would have been in a rough position when the storms blew in. As it was, we got in a pitch of hard trad climbing and 7 miles of hiking. The rock will always be there. Even next weekend…

In which, we learn about climbing on all passive pro, and can’t stop making stupid toilet-humor jokes.

There are lots of pictures from the day in the gallery.

A series of random decisions and strange events landed us at the bottom of The Pear on Saturday morning, at around 11am, with blue-bird skies above, and not another person around for miles. We decided it would probably be a good day to try to get all the way to the top of Magical Chrome-Plated Semi-Automatic Enema Syringe (5.7).

We’ve done the first two pitches of this climb earlier this year, and even climbed La Chaim (as a two pitch to the lower walk-off) before as well. But we’ve never topped out the Pear.

Also, we decided on Saturday that it was time to try a “true Lumpy Ridge rack”, which included almost two sets of nuts, and only 5-6 cams. This didn’t seem like such a big deal when we were on the ground. We’ve been trad climbing, using chocks and cams, for almost 5 years now. Surely we’d have no problem with this lighter rack!

Problems started on the first pitch, when it took me about 15 minutes of banging on one nut with my nut tool to get it out of the rock. Mark and I have been trad-climbing together for long enough that I am usually pretty darn good at getting his very weird placement puzzles figured out. He usually leads, and I usually follow, and I’ve always considered myself “The Nut Queen!” Usually I can pop those suckers out in no time. But on Saturday, my mojo was not flowing.

Mark was having his own problems as well. His pieces were good for down-pulls, but as the route has a twisting and traversing nature, he started having a few pieces actually pull out of the crack behind him! Yikes!

On the second pitch, I left one tiny nut, that was so far back in the crack I couldn’t even see it, behind on the route. In the anchor, I wailed on a giant purple chock with everything I had, cussing and scraping up my knuckles. I left two dents in the bottom of that chock, on on either side of the wire, and it never budged a millimeter.

Nuts falling out of cracks, nuts stuck in cracks, these are things that we haven’t had problems with in years. By the time I made it up to the top of the second pitch, I was feeling defeated and humiliated. Like a total n00b who shouldn’t be on the rock. I tried to convince Mark that we should walk-off, go home, and come back some other day when we had more cams.

But Mark chalked it up to “kinks in the system” due to our recent break from climbing, and he led on up past the escape ramp. I had no choice but to follow him up the rest of the route, and now I’m glad we kept going.

The fourth pitch turned out to be a lovely little crack climb, and the giant rock butt for which the route is named came into view. Mark joked about climbing the 5.9 variation that jams straight up the, eh-hem, crack, but we didn’t feel like we had the gear to protect it that day. The whole time I sat at the belay below that HUGE rock butt, I just couldn’t stop giggling. I’d think I had myself under control, and then I’d look up, and just start laughing all over the place again!

We summited the rock at around 4:30 in the afternoon. We stood on top of the butt, victorious, with the rest of our nuts still on our rack (see, I can’t stop!), at around 4:30p. There were a few distant clouds, but the sky was still clear, which was a small miracle for that area this time of year. A larger miracle was that we had not seen another person on our climb or rock all day! On a Saturday! On Lumpy! Amazing.

We screwed around a bit. Took some pictures. Eventually Mark found the rap anchors and then called me over. The book assured us that we only needed one rope to rap off the back of the summit, but looking over the edge, all we could see was a dark hole in the rock. A dank abyss beckoned us downward.

Mark, of course, went first. He made it down and I could hear his voice echoing out of the darkness “Don’t worry! The rope reaches! This place is amazing! Take pictures on your way down!!”

My eyes were not adjusted for the dark, and getting on rappel with my rope disappearing down into blackness was really creepy. I did not stop to take pictures. But it was a fun rappel.

It turns out, the rappel leads to a secrete space behind the Pear. A hallway was formed in the distant past. With vertical walls nearly 100ft tall on either side, and only about 4 ft apart. It looked like the rock had simply separated. A giant crack had formed, perhaps as the slab of the Pear inched slowly down the face of the ridge.

We enjoyed the cool darkness, and the scent of ferns in our spot. Then it was time to head out. The hike back to our bags was long, but not hard. We were packing up at the base of the climb by 5:30p, and in the car driving home around 7p. It was an amazing day, for many reasons. And I’m glad we got all of the kinks out of our systems. Heh heh.

Next time, we’re climbing with more cams.

Vedauwoo was actually crowded when we pulled in on Saturday morning. Evidently Jenny and Craig were throwing the wedding of the century at a beautiful overlook, on horseback, about 3 miles down Ved road past the Nautilus. We waited in traffic for a little while, and then eventually found the Reynold’s Hill trailhead. As we parked and unloaded, there were two guys cooking breakfast in the back of their truck, a whole group of boulderers lounging in the sun, and five guys unloaded out of another car, all carrying golf frisbees. “Just another beautiful day in paradise!” They called out as they walked past us. Mark and I agreed.

There’s pictures from the weekend in the gallery!

We started out our hike correctly. But the road began to seem to curve the wrong way. Too much time spent with Dylan, perhaps, caused us to decide to stop following the trail and head out cross-country towards the rocks. Of course, eventually we found ourselves in the middle of a horribly, thick, sticky, muddy swamp, with a giant rock and ravine between us and the climb. We walked through the swamp, around the rock. We found bits of trail and followed those for too long. An hour later, and we discovered we were so far off our mark that we’d made carpet-bombing look targeted. We navigated back towards the rock through thick woods and ravines using a (GASP) compass I keep in my pack. All told, it took us a little over two hours to get to the base of our climbs.

Mark started us out with a great lead of Pooh Corner (5.9). It was an extremely strenuous climb, and Mark climbed so hard that his biceps were spasming and his hands were siezing up in the jams. He didn’t fall, and got a solid redpoint of a hard, classic, long, Vedauwoo 5.9. I followed on top rope, and while I fell several times, I felt strong and balanced for large sections of the route. Despite Mark saying the route felt “Harder than Plumb Line,” I can proudly say I climbed it in much better style.

A group of three climbers from Golden attacked the corner next, and we watched them stooge around, getting everybody set to climb the second, overhanging offwidth crux, pitch, and then deciding to rap off. They took about an hour to climb the 60ft pitch, and likely decided to call it a day the minuted their leader started yelling “RETREAT! RETREAT!” as he stared into the gaping maw of the off-width above.

Mark and I explored the formation from the ground for a while. There are many very interesting looking multi-pitch chimneys, flakes, and cracks on these rocks, and many more rap anchors than we were expecting to see. I think one of the reasons I’ve always avoided Reynold’s is that the only guidance for descents in the book is “Downclimb to the north.” Now, if you’ve seen these rocks, you’d understand why I wouldn’t want to downclimb any of them. It turns out, neither does anybody else, and the towers and spires of the formation are littered with rap anchors.

We finished up the day with a climb up Maiden (5.6), which was a fun, steep, hand crack. More on the order of Ved 5.6’s like Bill Steal or the first pitch of Le Petite Arbour than easier cracks like Kim or Horticulture. Or maybe we were just burned out. Whatever the reason, we had a fun exciting climb on the way up, and a fun exciting down climb of the vertical gully to the right on the way down.

Mark made a good call when he decided we should head back after this and try to find a camp site. All of our usual haunts on the east side of the area were packed with people, but we did end up finding a really nice little site off of FS Road 700B.

Mark made a fire (well, several fires actually) using only flint and steal, and we had tasty steaks for dinner before sleeping happily in the cool Wyoming night.

In which, after a startling turn of events, we learn that our newly inherited rope is only 50 meters long, and that Mark should not be the one to carry the topo up the climb.

The plan for the weekend was simple. Find somebody to watch the dog, camp in Estes Park, climb Osiris (5.7+) on the Pages formation on Lumpy Ridge for Saturday and hike high peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park on Sunday. An easy, fun, weekend in the mountains.

Getting a campsite without a reservation on Friday night was harder than we would have liked, but we eventually found a nice site at Mary’s Lake Campground. We woke up with the sun on Saturday and made it to the Lumpy Ridge Trailhead around 7am! As we hiked out to the climb, Mark nearly stepped on a little new-born fawn just off the side of the trail. What a cutie!

Despite our ridiculously early start, we were second in line for Osiris. There was a pair preparing for the climb when we got there who worked and lived at McGregor’s ranch. Totally not fair.

It was at this point that Mark asked me to give him the photocopied pages from the guidebook that we had brought with us to use on the climb. “I’ll be leading,” he said reasonably, “I should keep the route description with me.” So I handed it to him. He put it in his pocket and then seemingly forgot about it immediately.

We watched the first pair climb the first two pitches of the route. They were able to combine the first two pitches (including taking the 5.5 zig-zag route off the ledge for the first pitch) and make it to the tree-ledge at the top of the second pitch with about 4 feet of rope to spare.

When it was our turn, Mark headed up the climb. He enjoyed the easy chimney climbing, and had fun with the few little off-widths. He decided to go straight up a crack on the left edge of the ledge at the top of the first pitch and head for the tree. He was about 30 feet off the top of the first pitch when we ran out of rope.

No problem!, thought I, I’ll just tie in and climb up a bit. That will give Mark enough rope to make it to the tree and set an anchor and bring me up. This type of climbing is known as simul-climbing, and we’ve seen a lot of it at Lumpy in last few trips. That’s probably why it didn’t seem like a big deal to me on the ground.

Mark, however, was hanging from fist jams in an over-hanging 5.8 crack when I informed him of our situation. He put two pieces in the crack and took himself off belay so I could tie into the rope and put on my rock shoes. I then climbed about 15 feet up the off-width starter crack at the bottom to give Mark some rope to work with. There was more communication confusion at this point as I tried to let Mark know that he should have enough rope to finish the climb out.

It turns out he didn’t quite. I had to keep climbing up the off-width another 15 feet to just below the base of the first chimney before Mark could make it to the tree. Then I got to stand in the off-width for several minutes while Mark built an anchor. I had solid heal-toe foot jams, and I was feeling comfortable in this easy off-width, but the people below me were kind of freaking out. They kept reminding me “In simul-climbing, the second MUST NOT FALL!” True, but there was 150ft of rope and 25 or 30 anchoring pieces of gear between us. Plus, the climb was easy. Still, their nervousness did not make me happy about my position, standing in a wide crack, waiting for Mark to put me on belay.

Eventually he called down “ON BELAY KATY!” and I started climbing the rest of the route. The chimney was fun, and the off-widths were slabby and easy. The great thing (or maybe sad thing) about Lumpy Ridge 5.7’s is that there are always so many features around, that you don’t have to do much jamming. Still, I had a great time on the pitch. I found Mark had placed the little Big Bro we brought with us, as well as the #4.5 and two #4s. The top cracks up to the belay were fun as well, I got in some great fist jams as well as some interesting hand stacks. These are all moves we do at Vedauwoo regularly, and it was fun to do them on the mild (practically soft) rock of Lumpy Ridge.

We discussed the rope situation at the belay, and determined we would have to be a lot more communicative about the amount of rope we were using than usual. Somehow, in the course of simul-climbing, improvising for rope length, and being in an alpine environment, Mark officially moved into “alpine” mindset, which doesn’t involve following “routes” in the usual sense. After setting a hanging belay in a wide crack above and to the right of the dihedral on the second pitch, he had not only forgotten that there was a topo for this route, he decided that we weren’t even really on a “route” per se, and were just climbing to the top of the rock.

So, our top three pitches were a little different and a little harder than the classic Osiris route. We never made it to the “Fang” (sorry Matt), and instead moved the belay up and right to the base of what we both decided was a “fun-looking crack.” Which it most definitely was. That 50ft section of our fourth pitch was one of the most fun cracks I have ever climbed at Lumpy. It was full of friction-y crystals, and moved from hands to fingers in a series of pods just far enough apart to require big swinging crack moves.

Instead of figuring out how to exit left, Mark kept climbing up the headwall, through wide bushy cracks and some loose rock until we ran out of rope again. Our top and final pitch was an overhanging dihedral. I was sore and tired at this point, and stared up at this intimidating feature without much love. Mark found a fixed nut in the crack and was bummed out that we weren’t the first people to end up at this spot. We both dug deep and finished out the climb by jamming the shallow, overhanging, grungy dihedral with amazing exposure below us.

The view on top was amazing, of course. I wasn’t quite as thrilled as last time, but we were, officially, on top of the Book. There was no place higher to go on this rock! I love great summits, and this one was beautiful, and totally worth it.

We cleaned up our gear, put on our hiking shoes, and scrambled down to a nice trail. A half hour of hiking later and we found ourselves about a mile from where we thought we were going to end up, and probably 500ft of elevation below where we had left our packs. Since Mark drank all of my water on the hike down, he graciously allowed me to nap under a boulder with the rope and rack while he jogged all the way back up the trail to get our empty packs.

Mark pulled out the super-hero inside of himself with that one, jogging the steep, rocky, approach to our climb and returning in a little less than half an hour. And we made it to Ed’s to meet up with Doug and Liz for beer and burgers by 5pm! Not bad for a simple day of easy crack climbing!

After our relaxing Saturday, Mark and I decided to climb on Sunday. The weather was forecast to be icky in the National Park, so we drove up to Vedauwoo for the day. The wind was whipping across the area from the west at more than 30 mph, which left us with a windchill around 40 degrees. We thought it might be a good day to check out the southeast face of the Holdout.

It took us a while to bushwack to the bottom of the climbs on the right end of the formation. For future reference, to get to the big ledge below the climbs, there is a gully on the right side (the left side is a shear face). The gulley was a little steep for Liv, so we had to lift her up, but she made it ok. On the way down, we packed the tight chimney with our backpacks and Liv sat on one as it slowly scraped down the chimney. Like a little elevator for the dog!

The wind was completely blocked on our sunny ledge. The air temp increased 50 degrees, and we climbed comfortably on sunny, windless, rock that day.

Mark and I wandered about the face a bit trying to decide what we felt up to climbing. We started out with Mark leading what we thought was Bushwack (5.6). A wide crack behind the flake below the arch of 19th Nervous Breakdown. The climb was hard, it was a little too narrow for Mark’s feet and a little too wide for mine. Mark took a little scraping oozing lead fall on our #6 cam. I took about three falls before I figured out the sequence. We finished up on the vertical section of 19th.

Interestingly, the website Vedauwoo.org has a slightly different labeling of cracks. It’s small and hard to read, but looks like the 5.6 climb was actually to the left of the one we were on. Maybe, maybe not.

Mark and I topped out and walked over to set a rope on two climbs to the left. We were surprised to see bolts on top of these, as there were none marked in the book. Unfortunately, only one bolt still had a hanger (a coldshut) the other was just a pole of threaded metal sticking out of the rock. We built a complicated anchor system for top roping which created so much drag that Mark had to re-do it all when he got to the top the second time.

We both climbed two other “routes” on our TR. One of them was definitely Narrow and Ugly (5.8), but we’re not sure which. Probably the handcrack that goes up the right side of the lower panel, as shown on Vedauwoo.org. Mark tried the finger-tips sized seem that splits the middle of the panel (and was marked as the 5.8 in our book) and couldn’t get much off the ground. I fell a bunch of times but worked it out and ended up climbing the little route (I did haul on the bushes in the crack). Despite the mislabling in our book, I’m pretty sure this little crack has no name right now. It will henseforth be called Very narrow and treesy (5.10+). It would make a good aid seem, except for the bushes in the middle of it.

After our three good cracks, we were appropriately scraped and bruised. Mark cleaned the rope (rapping off of the one cold shut, scary but safe in this case), and we packed up and headed home. It ended up being a warm and beautiful day, and we never saw any other climbers on the Holdout. I wonder where they all were?

We climbed “The Pear Buttress” on “The Book” in Lumpy Ridge (Estes Park, CO) which finishes at an area near the right shoulder of the formation which is called “The Cave Exit.”

This particular exit is indeed a cave and is generally rated 5.7+, though you will see in most comments that the moves are awkward. From a distance, I saw 3 people climb through it and that bolstered my confidence. I figured I could do it as well.

I stepped to the back of the cave and started working my way up slowly. As I approached the fixed piton, I was about one move away from it and got a good look at an amazing amount of air that I was about to hang my ass over, so I placed some of my own protection and then moved into and clipped the piton. I got myself into a good splits position between the two walls of the cave and started trying to figure out how to get up and through it. Kate said she could occasionally see my head poke out right next to one of my feet. Quite awkward! I toyed with lots of body positions that could have worked if only my elbow had an 180 degrees of bend. I continued to turn face-in and face out until I found a position I felt certain would allow me to get into the roof with some easy moves. Ready to proceed, I pushed up with my legs and my harness tugged me back down.

Mark: “Something’s caught or snagged, can you see it?”
Katie: “The rope is wrapped all around you a couple times!”
Mark: “Do you think it would clear up if I unclipped the piton?” (I had other protection already)
Katie: “I’m not sure, it’s all around your legs”

I did a little dance to shake rope off of each leg until it made an unobstructed straight line through the protection to Katie. Even if I fell, it would have been at most one or two feet and a rope wedgie. With all that straightened out, I could give the roof a go. It wasn’t too bad (5.7+ if you don’t climb like me) and the view from the top was fantastic.

I set an anchor and brought up Katie to admire the view as well and we eventually made out of the valley having had a perfect day.