Great shallow crack and chickenhead climbing.

Pitch 1:  climb up cracks traversing to easier knobs if desired.  Climb up far enough (passing above large shrub to the right) but still below the lower angle face full of knobs to the right (far side of the left facing corner/crack).  Build a gear belay.

Pitch 2:  climb up and over to crack, place pro, then step over the corner to the right onto the face loaded with big chickenheads.  Sling knobs, and, dance on up.  Can traverse to the right and back left on a line of knobs to keep the grade a bit lower.  In 60 or more feet, clip a bolt.  Climb up and trend left to the shallow and steeper ridge crest and pass the steeper section by slinging another knob.  Step up, look up and to the right above a low angle crescent cut out, and clip the last bolt.  Milk lower angle friction weaknesses to the top of the slab.  Find anchor towards the steeper wall just above the rappel back into the gully behind the wall (sling in pinch).

Descent:  single rope rappel back into the gully.  Follow gully down, take a left and either do a kinda sketchy downclimb on the climber's right of the gully, or, rappel from one of the large pine trees to gain the base of the route.

Note:  we didn't notice the "tunnel" mentioned in the guidebook and other route descriptions.  Wondering if recent rockfall has buried it...?

Omer's Route

Inknobvious Line

We Stand Corrected

Gay Caballero

El Pollo

Puppy Woof

This route starts as a left leaning finger and hand crack (5.8). Eventually the crack peters out into a knobby face. Make a few exciting moves on knobs up into a flared water groove, and follow this (5.9) to the top. A wee bit dicey.

One long pitch variation that joins El Diablo route at its first belay. Interesting face climbing on knobs.

This route is in the center of the formation. It starts about 50 feet to the right of El Gaucho.

Scramble up some blocks to a high first bolt. Climb up and left past 5 bolts and then traverse right. Don't keep going left here or you'll end up on El Bolo. There is also a much harder variation to the right of this line called El Polo Loco (5.12a).

Climb up easier slab past a couple more bolts to a roof. Pull the roof on big holds, then up more slab to the anchors.

Rap with 2 ropes, or swing right to the anchors on Cuban Slide to get down with 1 rope.

Climb cracks up the front face of the boulder up to the small roof. Pull over the roof on good jams. Straightforward, fun, and on perfect rock. If only it weren't so short!

Description

Location

Protection

Routes in El Gaucho