| Foolishness; 5.4, 3-Pitches Route |
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| Foolishness; 5.4, 3-Pitches   | 
| Page Type: Route Location: Wyoming, United States, North America Lat/Lon: 41.16600°N / 105.375°W Route Type: Trad Climbing Season: Spring, Summer, Fall Time Required: Less than two hours Rock Difficulty: 5.4 (YDS) Number of Pitches: 3
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| Page By: earthquakes Created/Edited: Nov 14, 2007 / Aug 12, 2008 Object ID: 356671 Hits: 761 Loading... Page Score: 88.4% - 9 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
Overview
Vedauwoo. The name conjures up images of cheese-grater like rock, blank slabs that reach into the clouds and horrid off-widths that chew up and spit out intrepid climbers into contorted hamburger at their base. Just looking at the guide book by Rob Kelman is enough to scare off most people. It seemed like every climber photographed in the guide was in some state of contorted agony. The expressions on their faces were anything but pleasant. Are all routes at the “Woo” like this? For the most part no, but Foolishness on the other hand is. This route was the most physically demanding and hardest route I've climbed yet, 5.4 or not!
Vedauwoo is an amazing place. A large granitic pile of rocks located in SE Wyoming. The pluton rises straight up out of the flat plains resembling some ancient monolith and shares this striking characteristic with Uluru in Australia. This route resides on one of the bigger monoliths in the park, Turtle Rock, and climbs a feature on the south side called Walt’s Wall.
First Moves |
Getting ThereGet on Interstate 80 and take the Vedauwoo exit ~16 miles east of Laramie Wyoming. Take the park road to the entrance station and turn in (left) here, pay your day use fee of $5 and head down the same road until it dead ends into a parking area after ~1 mile. Hike up and to the right (east) and then bear back left towards Walt’s Wall which is directly in front of you. Scramble up a faint climbers trail over many huge boulders. You’ll be climbing before you climb! Once up at the wall, you should be directly below or to the right of Edward’s Crack (5.7) so keep moving west along the wall until you come to a large left facing corner.
Route DescriptionTwo or three pitches, 150’, 1 bolt
P1: Begin by lie backing up the left facing corner for ~25’ to a gap in front of a near vertical wall. This crack takes small to medium cams or large stoppers. Move around the corner to the right and either stem across the gap which is ~2’ wide and 20’ deep or climb up on top of the ledge and traverse over to the large flared crack that goes for another 40’ up the wall. This is the crux of the route. You can place another piece here to protect the moves into the crack. I placed a #2 C4 Camalot. This crack is rather difficult to get into, so begin by jamming your right arm all the way to the shoulder to reach the fist sized restriction. Step across the deep gap into the crack/off-width and begin a brute force climb by jamming your arms up to the shoulders and wedging your legs all the way into the crack. Once you can get past this and up over your gear placement, the crack widens and more of your body will fit in. If you’re carrying a lot of gear, you may get stuck! Continue up the crack like this until it flares out and turns vertical. Squeeze into the chimney and pull yourself up and through by reaching your left arm above you and to the left. Unless you have some really big cams, the off-width is too wide here to place any more gear. Once you’ve wiggled out of the chimney, traverse along another deep gap on a shallower angle towards another left facing corner. Set up a belay here at a fixed hex. It’s stuck but in really good shape as of 11/2007. P2: Lie back up a steep slab while grabbing the crack below the left facing corner for ~30’. This accepts medium cams well. Once the corner gets smaller, use a sharp finger crack to climb up and over it to your right and traverse along a ledge for another 20’. You can set up a belay here because rope drag is going to get bad since this route zig-zags so much.
P3: Climb up on top of another ledge towards a blank slab/bowl feature where you’ll see an old homemade bolt in the middle to protect the runout. Clip it if you wish and head for another left facing corner, lieback up this where you can get a #3 C4 in to protect it. Continue along until the crack disappears and you must hoist yourself up and over a blank slab to reach the top. There is a bomber tree up here for setting up a great anchor.
Descent: Walk east for ~50 meters along class-4 exposed rock and find two rappel anchors. Here you can do a single rope rappel down to another set of bolted anchors and from there do a two rope rappel to the bottom or rap from here down and to your left (as you’re looking back up while on rappel) to a third set of bolted anchors. Rap off those to the bottom.
Essential GearCamalots, #2 - #4 at least, I placed two #2’s, two #3’s and one #4 in the crux crack alone on pitch 1.
Some large hexes.
Cordalette.
Draws/slings.
Larger sized stoppers.
60 m rope.
Helmet.
Rock shoes.
TAPE…lots and lots of tape! Your knuckles will get shredded on this as well as your ankles. I wouldn’t climb in nice clothes either. My jacket sleeve was/is pretty messed up now from the arm jams.External LinksAndy's video of the climb.
MP.com's page for Foolishness.
Vedauwoo's own web page! Images
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