East Face Zig Zag

Page Type Page Type: Route
Location Lat/Lon: 37.09810°N / 118.5167°W
Additional Information Route Type: Mountaineering
Seasons Season: Summer
Additional Information Time Required: Most of a day
Additional Information Rock Difficulty: 5.5 (YDS)
Additional Information Number of Pitches: 4
Additional Information Grade: II
Sign the Climber's Log

Overview

This is a pretty clean rock route that heads directly from the base to the true summit.

Getting There

Approach as for other east side routes and camp at the Palisade Glacier.

Route Description

Start at the base of the Underhill Couloir and leave your ice gear here if possible. Scramble right 200' and up 200' over loose shitty terrain to the base of a right-facing, left-leaning, low angle dihedral. This is hard to see until you are under it. It is at the bottom of a huge white intrusion that angles up and left across the face.

Climb the dihedral then zag right up a large block-filled low angled crack system. When this crack ends, climb up a clean flake and zig left to a belay ledge. Climb another pitch almost horizontal across clean flakes and edges to the start of 3rd class terrain. This is approx 4 pitches of 130' each.

Carefully route find up ~400' of 3rd class to gain the summit ridge. Scramble north the short distance to the summit block.

Essential Gear

A thin 50M rope, ~15 small/med cams/nuts, ~10 slings. Fishklr and I climbed this in rock shoes, carrying our mountain boots, but consider leaving your boots with your ice gear.

Descent

Scramble down beautiful 3rd/4th class rock to the top of the Underhill Couloir. Rappel and downclimb the couloir which is loose and dangerous if dry. You will be causing rock fall so do not rappel over another party. If there is a party near you stay together in the couloir.


Parents 

Parents

Parents refers to a larger category under which an object falls. For example, theAconcagua mountain page has the 'Aconcagua Group' and the 'Seven Summits' asparents and is a parent itself to many routes, photos, and Trip Reports.