Routes in Laurel Knob

Rack to 4 inches. Rap the entire FF route, 5 raps. Use two ropes, 70 meter recommended. Skip FF anchors at p 6 and 4. Anchors at top of pitch 1 are 150ft down and 40 ft left of pitch 2 anchors, so be careful to stay left and find them.

Better finish than the standard route. Do the first four pitches of the Groover original route then follow the crack to the right for two pitches, finishing in the groove for Forbidden Fruit at the FF anchors. Rap the entire FF route 5 raps. Use two ropes, 70 meter recommended. Skip FF anchors at p 6 and 4. Anchors at top of pitch 1 are 150ft down and 40 ft left of pitch 2 anchors, so be careful to stay left and find them.

Very serious slab climbing with lots of runout.

Seven or eight pitches but last pitch is dirty and uninteresting. Route generally follows water grooves that are shallow and slabby at first but become more like an offwidth higher up, around pitch 5 or so. Very hard climbing for the grade with adequate but limited protection so leader should be solid for the grade especially for tricky slab climbing. This route should be avoided when it is iced due to serious possibility of ice fall. P1: climb slab to small roof with horizontal crack which takes gear well. Climb right around the roof then straight up to anchor bolts. P 2: climb shabby groove then move left onto balancy 5.8+ slab just left of groove for best climbing. Clip one or two bolts for this section then trend back to the groove on your way to bolted anchors. P3 - Climb straight up the groove past a bolt. Either stay in the groove or move right onto the face to a good belay ledge with bolted belay.

 5.8+ P4 - more challenging slab to a hanging belay. 5.8 + P5: follow the groove which becomes almost an offwidth at this point. 5.8+ .

P6 - crux pitch. Move out right into the water groove...follow this up to a bolt on the left. Clip. Bolt on the left, then pull over a slight bulge. Good offwidth technique is very useful here. A Blue (3) cam can be placed above the bulge. Follow the groove on up to anchors on the left.

 Crux move is 5.9. P7 - Follow the groove to anchors. 5.6 P8 - Dirty. More trouble than it is worth. 5.5 Rappel down the route with two ropes from belay anchor. First Ascent: Peter Young, John Whisnant, Jim Marshall - 1972

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