Fresno Climber: Tree Route!!

Saturday I went to Shuteye, and banged out 10 pitches of climbing with Jared. The climbing was awesome, and Jared did super well, and it was tons of fun. However, I foolishly climbed routes I had previously done, so my climbing itch was not sated. Mental note: when stoke is high, start on the main objective! Luckily there was still Sunday so satisfy my addiction.

Teresa and I had planned to go for hike in Yosemite, but this week was free admission week, so it was going to be crazy there. I showed her the description for the Tree Route at Dome rock "best 5.6 in the USA", well that's an endorsement

Me - How do you feel about going to Dome Rock tomorrow? Its a 2.5 hour drive.

Teresa - Sounds fun!

Me - There is a possibility the road is not open , and we will have to walk in.

Teresa - That's fine

That' why I love my wife, 2.5 hour drive, possibility of failure drive to a closed road, and she is still down!

We had a late start on Sunday, hitting the highway at 9am. After a long drive, and a very twisty road, we ran into the being road closed! Teresa was undaunted. We had wanted to hike anyways, and with road closed, it was pretty much assured that we would have to climb to ourselves!

This is not a problem

The walk in was not that far, only about 35 min down the road. We found the sign pointing to the correct side road. Similar to Fresno Dome, you start at the top of the cliff, and walk down the side.

Good advice. Being the only humans nearby, nothing we had to worry about!

We headed down a drainage towards the base of the dome. In typical Cory fashion, I chose the wrong way, and we ended up on a level II bushwhack.

Cory style approach

We eventually found the base of the dome. We wandered along, admiring the terrific rock, and the bold looking routes!

This looks like a bad-ass climb.

After about 30 minutes we found the base of the "Tree route" We had some lunch, and headed up the best 5.6 in the country.

Start of the tree route. Perfect hand crack to start

The beginning of the climb was fabulous, an amazing handcrack, to a tree, then up some slabs to belay number one. The second pitch is the money pitch, 200' of finger sized crack. The thing took the same cam over and over again, so it was good practice in cam leap frogging.

Teresa on pitch 1

Start of the money pitch

The climbs was amazing, I fully endorse the "best 5.6 in the USA" designation. Its rare to have such great climbing at such an easy grade!

Teresa almost up pitch 2

Throughout the climb we also had terrific views of the Needles, which are just up the road from Dome Rock. I really need to head over there soon, and climb Voodoo Dome, looks soooo very good.

Views of the Needles

Pitch 4 is the "crux", a 5.6 slab. Since I had climbed a 5.10c and a 5.10b slab on Saturday, so this felt like a walk in the park

Before the crux

Soon, we were at the top. Such a great climb! The best part was Teresa's enthusiasm, and for once having a giant multi-pitch climbing dome all to ourselves! The crux of the climb was the fire-ants biting me on pitch 1 and 3.