Ascents as Hang dog as trad by Nick Boldt

#2. A struggle but enjoyable.

#3. Ran out of gas midway up and the top became a lot of huffing and puffing to finish. Would do again for sure.

#2. Seconded. Scary traverse, as like last time. But past the scary bottom bits, it's a lovely climb above. Gaston'd the crack to get thru that section, where a layback might have also worked (Will's beta was very different). He plugged a couple cams, but guidebook says you only need one. Definitely needed a rest/take before figuring out the crack sequence.

#1. Bit stiff for a warmup, but Jamie decided he wanted the extra challenge instead of warming up on Smoking El Bum Waddos, a 5.9 G. He cruised it pretty easily. First attempt: put in two pieces and then reset to start over. Second attempt: ran up it clean.

Then I fought the crack for a while, decked a couple times at the start (because being NS, the crux was getting off the ground, as usual!) and eventually made my way up. Gave up trying to jam the crack midway, and since I was on safely protected TR, opted to layback the middle section, only flailing and falling a handful of times.

Karla went up about half way and decided the battle wasn't worth the effort as she didn't want to be pumped for the rest of the day. WISE MOVE, as my horrible performance on Sleeper would later demonstrate.

Jamie then pulled the rope, ran back up the route plugging less gear, and completed it with what looked like very little effort. Delightful to watch & learn from.

Will have to try this again when I'm fresh, rested, and not thinking about dead family members.

#2. Apparently I had no gas left after my TR assault on Farewell To Arms. After Jamie led and Karla unclipped gear (but left it in) I had no choice but to actually get my ass up the wall to get the gear back.

Struggled to get off the ground, fell off 2-3 times. Got past the initial left hand jug at the start (once I found it, FFS). Made some grovelling progress, fell off again and hung about 4 feet off the deck.

Eventually figured my shit out and climbed it, but OMG not my finest hour.

Second pitch: Jamie led, and I went up after him as I was running out of time and needed to hike out to the car for a previous commitment. Second pitch was easier - Jamie only placed on cam (compared to the 4-5 pieces in the first, longer pitch). Karla came up last and they rapped back down while I hiked out.

Rather than top out into the cave and hike down, John climbed the right side of the gully up into the cave, set some pro, down climbed a little and traversed left over to the top of the bolted sport route on the left side of the gully. The 2 (or 3, if desired) bolts to anchors was probably a 5.7 or 5.8 section, making this 5.5 a bit more challenging and worthwhile.

Climbing on double ropes is probably recommended so you can have two very different safety lines. Unfortunately when I got into the cave I tangled my lines, so I had to hang one bolt below the anchors on the 5.7/5.8 face to untangle my ropes before finishing the route.

John set gear, then Sean/Shaina cleaned gear and I TR'd up the crack to avoid the "round the tree" mess the rest had to do.

Awesome crack climb. Swung off once just before the overhang crux, rested a couple times. Amazed that General was able to trad lead this route - it felt more like a 5.10+ than a 5.8, even as a mere TR.