Starlord

Starlord climbs the obvious and stunning steep crack on the left tower-wannabe in the back of the canyon just past Goliath. This stunning route boasts three stellar pitches, two with perfect patina splitters unlike almost anything else found in Sedona. Bomber rock, bomber placements, and just a good ole time in the galaxy more than make up for the hour approach. This route is high up in the canyon, so count on it being about 20 degrees colder than Sedona proper. In the shade most of the day, with an alpine start you can avoid sun. Upper pitches get sun at about 2:30.

P1: Start in the clearing at the base of a short stembox with a bolt. Wiggle up the stembox and doe-si-doe around the corner to another directional bolt. Climb right on easy ground to the right of the bulge then move left and over the bulge to the flared hand jam. Pull through this funkadelic move to wild juggy flakes straight up to the belay below the roof. 10a

P2: Money! It’s pretty hard to get lost on this pitch, as it’s a perfect splitter almost the whole way. Make good use of runners under the roof and punch it! After the tight hands thrash and dangle, reap the reward of perfect, steep, splitter hands! Keep going past the rap chains to the belay just past the last ten feet of easy blocks. 11+

P3: Prepare to enter the rabbit hole! Head to the other side of the flake that’s just to the right of the belay. Waltz up the crack to broken twin cracks leading to a wide slot. Finagle your way up the slot and out right onto a ledge. Stand up, regain your dignity, and prepare to lose it again wiggling up and into a stunning open book feature where you will use not one, but three styles of climbing to follow the crack up and right. Take a #3 camalot for a walk up this crack to prevent drag. At the end of the book, leave your #3 at the door and get ready for some serious exposure! Edge your way out of the book and onto the exposed face splitter of glory. Follow the splitter to the corner and stem and jam your way up to the final mantle. Continue up easy ground onto the belay ledge and build an anchor (.3, .4, .5). Once your follower is up, belay each other down to the rap anchor to the climber’s left of the agave on the edge of the summit. DO NOT unrope and walk to the rap anchor. Rap with a single 70m to the next rap chains that you passed on pitch two. 10a

Approach as you would for Goliath in Mormon Canyon. Follow cairns and cut right from the wash up and to the right of Goliath into “middle wash”. Follow the wash and cairns to “upper wash” past Goliath to the back of the canyon. Follow cairns. Look for a whitewashed finger-looking crack on a tower-esque feature on your left. Starlord is around the corner on this feature. Look for the obvious roof splitter. You will dead end at a grey slab wall, leave your packs here, then walk up dirt ramp between shrubs to mini chimney.

One 70m rope Nuts/sliders 1x green C3 – yellow C3 1x .3, .4, .5, #4 2x .75, #3 3-4x #1, #2 2 draws 7-10 runners