Info on Boving route on Dragontail

[NYC007]

anyone got some beta on this climb??

[layton]

lunger and dirtyharry have both climbed it and said yeah fun

[lunger]

yeah fun

 

some occasionally spicy .10 on clean, solid, compact granite; bring small gear.

[roboboy]

I was on a UW climbing club trip to Lworth with Paul Boving once and I still remember him talking about planning to climb the smooth slabs on the Dragontail face. I watched him solo angel crack in stiff mountain boots that weekend. I struggled up it on toprope with EBs. Sadly he was killed in a fall on the town wall a few years later (thin fingers I think it was). My partner on the Lworth trip was Quin Koenig ("Conehead") of Darington route name fame - it turned out to be an epic weekend of climbing for me, to say the least.

[W]

I climbed this in 1998. My partner Joe and I were concerned about the guidebook's entry: "bring KB's for the belays". We asked around a lot but we couldn't find anyone who had done the route to confirm this. Enroute to Colchuck Lake in the dark, there was a party hiking at a fast clip ahead of us who we barely caught up to as we reached the lake. Joe joked "it's probably Matt Christensen (Boving's partner on the FA) going to retro bolt the Boving route. Well...it was Matt Christensen, and his teenage son, although enroute to climb Prusik.So we got the beta right there.

 

The first 5 pitches are stellar, mostly clean, with a few spicy face moves. Some of the climbing is a little run on p2 and p3 if I recall, but the hardest moves always have pro closeby. Definitely, the 1st belay took a little time to rig. There were broken off KB's here. Pitches 3 and 4 were a little dirty in places but not too bad. After the traverse left above p5, it is like a looser version of upper Serpentine ridge. All of that was simple except there was one 5.9 pitch up high that maybe could have been avoided by better routefinding.

 

The only things I remember about rack needed was some thin nuts (including brassies) and a #3 camalot were useful. But no KB's needed.

 

One thing- after we did it, Jim Nelson told me he thought it had quite a lot of rockfall hazard from the headwall above the opening pitches- we didn't see or hear any, but certainly there's a lot of blocky things hanging over you.

[kurthicks]

thanks!

[scottgg]

Good Luck Kurt! When are you guys headed up there?

[joepuryear]

Mark, I remember one of the belays being a #5 offset and a blue Alien, and maybe another mental-anchor-backup nut. Definitely bring some small gear.

As far as the rockfall goes - I've studied the route carefully since climbing it and there is a gigantic rock scar high above the route in addition to a lot of loose blocky terrain directly above. It's kind of a crap shoot for sure. Be careful and climb fast!

That said, those 5 or 6 pitches are some of the best I've climbed in the area (except for maybe the Dragonfly headwall). The rest of the route leaves much to be desired - good route-finding needed for sure.

Have fun!