Does the Prow go clean, and if so at what grade? Any useful beta?

-- John Arrington (hobbesbgr8@hotmail.com), May 28, 2001

Answers

Howdy!

The route goes clean fairly easily now -- people call it C2. There's a lot of fixed heads up there. See the Supertopo and Tuan's website for more info.

As for some recent beta, I did this route last season and it went clean without any offset nuts, offset aliens, or a cheater stick. They would have been nice to have, though. Cam hooks, on the other hand, were invaluable!

P1 the Jo-Jo variation to start looked like fun. P2 may be wet -- cam hooks to fixed pieces. There was a 'gap' in a bolt ladder on either P5 or P6. I used a narrow cam hook, though an RP or a cheater stick would also have worked. P8 and P9 barely linked with a 60m -- I should have backcleaned more aggressively. P10 is a hauling nightmare -- clip the hauline at the ledge before the chimney to prevent it from swinging right around an arete and getting stuck (I did this, and it still got stuck!) At the top of P12, walk over to the tree directly above the belay and haul from there.

Oh, and "don't do the belly crawl".

It's a great route, but be prepared for traffic. Have fun!

-- Joe Chen (chenjs@stanford.edu), May 28, 2001.

John, I did the prow in april, so I hope the beta isn't to late. Use Chris McNamara's guide it's right on. There are some blown cables on heads but you can hook'em or use a pecker. Definitely recomend the leeper cam hooks for P2 and the rest of the route, saved me alot of time. Link 2/3 and 7/8, not 8/9. Rope drag can be bad with both links so

-- Rick (starman1@care2.com), August 24, 2001.

John, I did the prow in april, so I hope the beta isn't to late. Use Chris McNamara's super topo guide it's right on. There are some blown cables on heads but you can hook'em or use a pecker. Definitely recomend the leeper cam hooks for P2 and the rest of the route, saved me alot of time. Link 2/3 and 7/8, not 8/9. Rope drag can be bad with both links so plan well. Really no reason to nail at all. stiff C2 (P2)

-- Rick (starman1@care2.com), August 24, 2001.

it's been awhile since I did the route(but after it was rebolted), but it definitely went clean. Aliens were invaluable; me and my partner had quadruples up to 1" (including some offsets), all but the small blue ones were used up. In fact, I tried for "wireless" leads (what's the point but what else is new in climbing?) and managed to do large sections of the route solely with cams only. As far as hammered gear we had a couple peckers and some heads, didn't use either. Some of the frayed fixed heads can be a little nerve-wracking to get on, but you're always just above good gear. I don't recall doing any cam hook moves, but they're always nice to have. I feel that the route can be done C1+; that is, if you're slow and anal you can get A1 placements pretty much the whole way. Just a couple other notes: when we were on the route, a solo climber (trying to do the route in 24 hours and a solid A4 leader) took a 50-footer on P4 and broke his nose - we had to help him to the ground (we were bivvied at the top of P3). A red alien ripped and he had backcleaned all his gear back to a fixed pin 25 feet below. So don't be too sloppy with your placements, which will be a lot of small cams into flared pinholes. And flinging tortillas off of Tapir Terrace can be sublime :)

oh yeah, I've done JoJo (on aid, I can't lead 5.10b), it's fast plug and play C1 in aiders but you need lots of big cams, up to a 3.5 Camalot near the top. I was leapfrogging cams like crazy, and each one was solid but if one popped I would have gone for one hell of a ride.

-- Toby Yim (tobereeno@yahoo.com), June 02, 2003.