Fresh Gale

A long route with very dirty cracks and slabs guarding the base, but two beautiful pitches up high to make up for it. If lower cracks clean up, those could be fun as well.

P1, 5.5, ~180 feet: From the rappel landing platform, scramble right and slightly up along dirty cracks and slab. You'll pass under a large block with a 3-4 inch crack running up. We took this crack, but I would recommend staying low and right in retrospect. We had to downclimb a gully after following this crack, which plopped us right back at the height of the bottom of this block, just slightly farther to the right.

P2, 5.8, ~80 feet: (probably 5.6 if it was clean): Continue heading right until you see two leftward leaning diagonal cracks heading up above you. The first has a detached block at its base that you can scramble up on. Head up the left-most crack. There is a rivet in the slab to the right of the crack. Place a trad anchor just to the left of this rivet.

P3, 5.8, ~120 feet: Make some delicate slab moves to the right (use a nut or rivet hanger to clip the rivet). 0.5 cam fits in a crack to provide protection to the right. Continue moving right on easy terrain until you reach the second leftward-leaning diagonal crack, then head up. Be careful of loose rock, but thankfully you're not above your belayer. Just don't kick a rock down and slice your rope! Climb to a section where I dug out enough mud to get a few cams in.

P4, 5.9, ~200 feet: Continue up the muddy crack. You're aiming for a large pine tree that's almost straight up / a little to the right. The rock becomes less muddy over time, but there is a delicate section with what appeared to be a death block. I avoided placing any gear or weighting that block. When the crack reaches an easier area, turn right and up. You'll reach an exciting step across to the right with lots of air below your feet. Walk a few feet up the slab and pull up a cool 5.9 crack / face climb section. Belay at the large tree.

P5, 5.7, ~200 feet: Head up and left. There's an enticing looking low angle crack / slab to the right, but it was wet when we did it. So I went up and left along some jumbled terrain. It didn't protect all that well, but it was fairly easy for most of the pitch. Aim for a very bushy area overhead (although the recent fire seems to have killed these bushes, so they won't be around for long). The ultimate goal is a right facing corner crack system that starts just up and slightly left of the bushy area. Aim for that corner and place a belay where you can.

P6, 5.7, ~200 feet: Follow the beautiful right facing corner system upwards to Valhalla. Turn your route finding brain off because there is only one way to go, and it's hecka cool. Place a belay when the crack begins heading almost completely left and you reach a broken area that has a nice little sitting ledge for the belayer.

P7, 5.6, ~260 feet: Continue left along the crack system. This will head up to a ~7 foot vertical section. This move is protected by an ancient bolt from some other undocumented route. Continue up and sort of left on very easy terrain. I aimed for a big tree but ran out of rope (80m) before I got there.

P8, low 5th: Head above the tree, then hard left. You'll find an easy way to step up onto the final very low angle path to the top. Continue upwards until you reach an area you feel comfortable walking off from.

Located on the north face of Bald Rock Dome. I'll describe the way we took to get there, although hiking down the treed slope north of Bald Rock Dome might be better. The approach took us half a day, but I think that was mostly because we were trying to figure out where to go.

Follow the standard approach to all Bald Rock Dome routes. Continue skirting along the base of the dome, past all the existing routes. You'll eventually reach an area where the sub-dome area drops away in a few different gullies. There's a buttress / finger of blocky rocks extending away from the dome. The gully next to that finger is the one that we descended. We scrambled down to an oak tree above some sketchy looking terrain. Then rapped off that oak tree to a ~10 inch cedar tree. Rapped off that cedar to a small standing ledge with another oak tree (41m rap, an 80m rope didn't quite reach). Then a final rap to a large ledge, which is the beginning of the "climb" (the first pitch is a pretty easy scramble to the right, so maybe roping up isn't necessary)

Nuts, Rivet hanger, Double rack from 0.2 through 4