p1 - fun 5.8 ish climbing leads up to a short and well protected 10a crux, continue up to the bolted belay and either rap or continue on p2 - right slanting crack (5.9) and p3 roof to slab (10c).

Road Work

Asphalt Jungle

Overpass

Soft Shoulder

Unknown Slab

Speed Trap

Manzanar

Out on a Limb

Made in the Shade

Impotent

Asphalt Jungle is aptly named as you'll need to navigate a couple of jungles on this one and you might be in for an ass-whooping if you believe the 5.9 rating.

The crux may be getting off the ground as the crack at the start is merely a seam. You can protect the tricky bottom first with a good spot from your belayer and then with micro cams (black alien, 00 C3). The crack gradually widens to hand jams the higher you go, easing in difficulty until you arrive where the vertical crack ends at a small dead tree. At this point you carefully surmount the tree and climb a right diagonaling undercling. This would be really fun if you weren't so worried about getting your kidneys skewered by the sharp branches of the pitchfork below. (Bring a pruning saw to make this safer.) Continue up another easier crack and around a final bush to the top.

Belay at the ledge. Takes .75 - 3" gear.

Mixed face and crack climbing lead to a memorable bombay exit chimney at top of wall.  Two pitches, but to be honest I can't remember where we stoppped at the top of the first pitch.  The topo shows a likely spot, but we may have stopped closer to the chimney.

Climb the left facing flake to flaring dihedral. The crux comes about 2/3 of the way up where the corner appears to be an overhanging, flaring offwidth. Luckily, it's not as bad as it looks from the ground.

Slab route with long run outs. Heady first clip followed by 40 foot sections between bolts higher up.

Worth TR'ing after Speed Trap.

Climb the right facing corner that spans from chimney to fingers and the slab to its right. A slung boulder at the top works well for an anchor. 3rd class walk-off to the right.

This is perhaps the most striking line on Roadwork Wall, and it is a fun and relatively moderate route. The large right-facing corner will provide you with shade in the afternoon.

Pitch 1: Up a fun lieback which turns into a wide funky slot near the end. Belay on the big brushy ledge.

Pitch 2: Blocks and flakes in the corner with some awkward bulges. Belay on large wedged chockstone.

Pitch 3: Squeeze up the chimney until it starts getting too tight. Then find a foothold and come out of the chimney and into a lieback. After a ledge is a large roof. Place gear up under the roof (with long runners) and then slab climb to the right to avoid the roof. Above you keep traversing right and finish up a weakness in a steep chossy headwall.

Hike off to the left (west) and down a 3rd class gully back to the base of the cliff.

This is the route furthest left on Roadwork Wall. Hike all the way to the left end, past Made in the Shade, and then scramble up a ways to a ledge that comes in from the left.

Rope up on this ledge (which might be covered in ants) and climb out onto the limb of a tree. Clip a bolt and head up the slab for a shallow dihedral. This left-facing corner takes small to "1 gear. Exit the corner onto the slab to the right. Then more slab climbing leads past the occasional rest knob and the occasional bolt. It gets steeper and thinner as you near the end. Belay at the 2 bolt anchor and then rap to the ground with 2 60m ropes.

I found this climb to be hard as hell for the grade, but I suppose that has been my reaction to pretty much any slab climb in the Portal.

The crux comes right away.  The thin dirt-filled finger crack has thin pro and moves.  When I climbed this, it felt a bit harder, since I was digging pine needles out of the crack with my nut tool so I could place pro and get my fingers in.  Once past the offending pine tree, the climbing gets a lot cleaner.  The crack system eventually becomes a chimney.  Belay on a ledge at 180'.  Another 180' pitch leads to the top on more grainy 5.7 terrain.

Sustained edges and smears with a couple of distinctly harder sections.  Overall good rock with a few flakey sections that will clean up with more traffic.

Description

Location

Protection

Routes in Roadwork Wall