Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Merlin Dome; Needles, CA

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After our success on Demon Dome we thought we’d give Merlin Dome a shot.

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Route descriptions were poor but described and rarely harder than 5.9.  We found this dihedral with cracks and headed up it.

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Anja cruised the first pitch 5.7

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to a nice tree ledge belay.

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I headed up the second pitch which was mellow 5.7.

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Anja followed the second pitch to my nice fat belay ledge.

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Anja headed up the third pitch.

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About half way up it got dicey with kind of poor gear on some poor rock and very wondery.  She lowered off and gave me a shot.  It took some rope management and climbing on the double ropes was real handy here to manage rope drag.  I pulled through and wondered around and found a 3rd nice belay ledge.  Anja followed up but we just saw slab above with no bolts and didn’t look promising.  So we down climbed a 3rd class rap to the right and then down lead a 4th class gully to gain the base of the dome and walked back to our gear.  While not as big a success as our previous day on Demon Dome it was a nice 3 pitches of climbing.

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