A lot of steep walking for an ok route, nice view from the top chill day, worth it if doing other routes in the area, can also watch the pros projecting Dawn Wall from the ledge
Very nice route. The start is the clear face climbing crux and can be hard if you‘re not warmed up or used to the rock. Bolted anchor on P1, with rap rings. After that, you need to build your own anchors.
The jam crux, for me, was P3, a thin seam with finger jams and narrow toe jams, without too many opportunities to relax your feet on the face outside of the crack.
Last pitch is runout to the top, no pro to be had.
Descent: Rap twice (with 60 m rope) on the backside of the dome. With 70 m you might be good woth a single rap, but you won‘t see in advance if your ropes touch the ground. The rap station is right next to a significant tree. The rap bolts should be replaced, very rusty.
On solid ground, go right to descend to your car, or left to get back to the base — caution, you‘ll have to scramble down some low angle slab, but easy in the dry, even in sneakers.
Led every single pitch on this route, I almost got sick of leading after topping it out. It took us 2 hours to find the repel station and I did the run repel which made me climb up again almost in darkness.
This is shortest route on El Cap, I took my first trad climbing fall on this route, a bit scary. Yet, being able to climb on El Cap says it all for the experience.
Hiking was quite long, around 5 miles with 2500 feet elevation gain. Climbing was really good with all the exposure. The bad thing was I had altitude sickness when we topped the route. Felt almost drunk, but I knew I had to walk down. Weiyi was kind and strong to carry all the gear, I made it back OK. This was quite an experience.
Solid climbing at or near the grade until the last two pitches which follow fourth class tallus to the top. Lots of features for short pitching as needed
This was my first multipitch climbing, started at parking lot 3am in the morning, came back to parking lot 3am, hiking+climbing for 24 hours. The 2 hours driving following the megaday was killing me. This is the experience I will remember for my life.
Seconding Stephen. I decided to only use the wide crack for chimneying/offwidth practice... in that style it felt desperate. Good climbing, but once again it felt substantially harder than the grade.
Seconding Stephen. The moves might be yosemite 5.8, but the crack and footers are slippery as glass. Felt harder. Good, well protected friction slab laybacking.
