No Vrainer is a reasonable route, but one that gets no traffic. With some cleaning or more persistent traffic, it might be 2 stars and be better protected, but the thin seam crux was complex and a bit dirty. As such, it was not a courage-inspiring lead. This can be solved by toproping it from the 2-bolt anchor up top, of course.

Start off climbing mellow territory in thin cracks and flakes. Place a hand-sized cam just before a small poison-ivy plant, and then look up and left. Climb up and left, placing whatever protection you might be able to engineer to get into a shallow and obtuse corner with a good stance.

Now feel the multitude of terrible holds overhead, presuming you are not 6'6" or so. Try to get more gear... try to convince yourself that these holds are good, or that the feet will stick. Back down, and think about gear again. Eventually you'll either back off to TR it, resign yourself to being OK with what you have, or maybe find some really good gear, but the latter seems improbable. The gear stays below you or is shallow RPs in a somewhat grungy crack, I guess.

I remember telling my partner: "I wish I had a 1% confidence that this would work" before pulling off of the rest ledge and into the crux sequence to some better holds. I surprised myself again laughing about just how sticky that rock can be in the SSV and finished up the rest of the route with relative ease.

No Vrainer

Vrain Teaser

Fully Gratified

Vrain Teaser climbs a good section of rock that is all too short. This can be made longer, and much harder, by continuing up the OW flake above as for '

Fully Gratified

' if the tease just worked up your appetite.

The climb starts up slightly flaring thin hands jams, but the friction is so good it might as well be perfect hands the whole way. Hand and foot jam up the obvious crack just a few feet left of the end of the wall. The crack eats 1.5"-3" gear as easily as your hands and feet dig in.

Climb the obvious crack to the top, a 2 minute affair, and either scramble up and off to the right on easy territory to find an belay, or...continue up and left on

Fully Gratified

(5.10a), which is by far a better finish.

If you liked the looks of the

Vrain Teaser,

but the 5.7 grade or 30' length seemed less than satisfying, why not try for a Fully Gratifying route?

Climb up as for the

Vrain Teaser

, and top out on that hand crack. Look up and left to see a small, dual-trunked pine tree growing from just below a wide, flaring, bulging flake.

Get gear just below the pine, and then climb up and to the flake. Get gear behind the flake - low down a hand-sized cam and higher, a #4 Camalot is perfect, but blocks a key jam. Pull on up and into the flake, and grunt your way up the crux to the top of it. Follow a series of moderate crack from here to the top of the crag to belay from a gear anchor or a cordalette around a huge boulder.

Description

Location

Protection

Routes in The Vrain Trust