Black opal starts as a couple of low angle flaring cracks, that moves up to a steep bulge with three vertical slashes in it (crux) to lower angle climbing up higher.  It is left of Blue Wind, and right of Hemrhoids in Flight.

Black Opal

Surrealistic Pillar Direct

Beer Can Direct

Hemorroids in Flight

Jailbreak (variation)

Sinbad-Herbert

Novitiate's Nightmare

Surrealistic Pillar

Pillar of Society

Crown Royal

Easy Moss

Black Pyre

Bear Hug

A Boy and His Arête

Wild Turkey

Blue Wind

Farce (aka Novitiate's Delight)

Black Magic

The Groove

For Real Crack

Thin flareing crack to a long flareing reach over a bulge. Double up under the bulge because you arn't getting anything in until you're over it.

This is a great starting pitch to Surrealistic Pillar.  It can be easily TR'ed after leading the first 5.7 pitch to the right.

Follow a right-facing dihedral with a large hand crack.  A combination of stemming and jamming will lead to the crux.  There are a couple fixed pins near the crux.

The height of the first bolt and the near-groundfall potential while clipping the second bolt keep many people off this climb; it shouldn't. After clipping the second bolt, clip the third, fire the crux, and enjoy a well-protected climb on horizontal dikes. A final, thin crux comes after the last bolt and before the anchor.

Begin at a tree where the Farce starts.

Climb past a bolt to a shallow jamcrack. follow this to an overhang with two bolts.

Climb over this overhang and up to a belay.

Scrambling leads to the top.

This is great TR or heady lead in between the 5.10b and 5.7 starts of Surrealistic Pillar.  The climb starts out with some runout face climbing for 30ft, with what is considered questionable gear for some and good enough for others. You be your own judge on that. Pull left into some thin cracks and follow them to the roof above.  Jam the powerful crux roof and continue on easy rock to the anchors. The runnout section below the roof is no harder than 5.8 at any time.

Sinbad-Herbert starts just right of Crud Gully if you're facing the rock.  It's a great, steep handcrack on the left wall, that goes to some intermediate anchors 60' up.  Going just to here is probably .10a or .10b.  From the intermediate anchors, continue up the bolted face for another 120'.  It is all bolted face climbing, with bolts right at hard moves, well protected.  Excellent moves.  This is a newer route, and the upper section is still a little 'green' but still excellent.

You need 2 60m ropes to descend, one 70m to reach the lower anchor, or you can traverse to the Groove anchor, or top it out at 5.6R.

Novitiate's Nightmare is a variation of The Farce, with a direct start and finish.  To start, begin 15' above the groove, in the alcove below the large boulder.  You can see the crack running all the way from the base to the top of lower buttress, splitting a 3' roof 3/4 of the way up.  There is a .8 move just above the ground, (listed as the 5.6 direct start to the Farce in the guide) and pulling the roof is a bouldery .9.  Both moves are well protected, and the rest of the route is much easier.

The roof is a fun move, and the route is worthwhile if you're trying to get up to Main wall and surrealistic and the groove have traffic.

You can do this in one long pitch with a 60m rope.

This excellent route ascends the entire length of the Lower Buttress, bringing you up out of the giant forest below and high enough so you think you're way the hell up.  Then you top out, and realize that the main wall of Lover's Leap hovers over you, and that you're a mere peon in between the giant walls of horizontal dykes.

For a 5.7, this has an excellent variety of terrian for only 3 pitches.

Accessing the route is easy: Walking up to the Lower Buttress,  walk right until you find the first set of bolts. Then walk a little more to the second set of bolts, which is Pillar of Society (.12a). The next crack is the Direct Start of Surrealistic Pillar (.10a), and finally you'll be on a tier with a flat face and a couple of large horns about 15 - 20 feet off the ground. You're here.

Pitch 1:  Climb up to the horns, and continue up and left to a well protected crack system to a wide (4") left facing crack.

Pitch 2:  Follow this crack up for about 4 dykes, where you need to cross to a large horn. Follow this around the arete, where you can belay from a ledge.

Pitch 3: Simple. Go up the face with large jugs and belay from something suitable up top.

Pillar of Society is the first route you come to, as it is right at the top of the trail from the campground to the Lower Buttress.  Look for the giant 3' diameter cobble.

This route starts up thin dikes on the face 25' right of Sinbad-Herbert.  A few bolts to the roof crux, pull the roof and continue on .8 climbing to the anchor, which is shared with the Sinbad-Herbert.  To descend, you need 2 60m ropes to rap, 1 70m to rap to the SH intermediate anchor, or you can traverse to the Groove anchor or top it out at 5.6R.

This is a somewhat random line that shares the same start as

For Real Crack

– but moves out left across the face where For Real Crack goes off to the right.

"Climbing 5.12 on pristine rock is easy. 5.8 choss covered with moss is where the real business happens."

– Pro Choss Climber

P1:

Begin climbing an unprotected face to a knob. Stand on the knob and place your first pro (

10+ feet

high

). Continue up the obvious wide, mossy crack until it peters out to a bunch of horizontal dikes. Using the dikes as jugs, traverse to another crack to the left. Continue up this crack until it stops, then do a diagonal, left, and runout traverse to a mini ledge. Once on this small ledge, start looking for pro. We didn't find good pro for a belay here, so we continued up another 15+ ft. or so through the squeeze chimney and set a belay in the middle of it.

P2:

From your last belay, continue up the next part of the squeeze. Once the chimney ends, a little higher you'll land on a ledge where the rock looks white. Climb up this section finding small pro where possible until you arrive on another slabby ledge. From the slabby ledge, continue straight up the low-angle face finding your way to the top. Build a creative belay using the boulders on top.

Pitch 1.

Begin by climbing up the same crack system as For Real Crack which lies just left of the mossy crud gully. Exit the crack to the right where it ends and cross over the next crack to the right (For Real Crack) and continue into the next crack system which is capped by a small roof and also has a large downward pointing horn you must "bear hug" to get around. Just before the roof, move right into a nice crack system and build a belay just above the roof.

Pitch 2.

Climb up until you get to a dike filled slab above which passes an overhang on the left. Follow the gully and build a belay somewhere (Many options) on top.

An adventure climb, for sure. Climb the sustained, sometimes-clumbly face just to the right of the arête. Keep your head on when pulling on hollow flakes. At the first big roof, traverse to the left side of the arête (into the left-facing corner). Get a few good jams before traversing back right onto the face at a prominent horn on the arête. Clip a bolt and climb up the face on 5.6R territory before reaching a second roof. Again, traverse left over the arête and onto a slightly overhung face for a few moves (really, only a few, don't try climbing up the overhung face too far), at which point you swing BACK onto the face and make some easy moves to the chains.

Rap (barely, with rope stretch) with a 70m rope, or (probably a better idea) with two ropes.

Wild Turkey! The last time I had a shot of this stuff I kept it down for about 30 second before the cauldron of my stomach boiled over and I filled a nearby pint glass with a foul brew.

Chances are if you're looking at this route on mp.com you've wandered by the lower buttress, seen those two pink poot slings hanging off that old pin and wondered 'what is that thing?' That thing is the seldom repeated Wild Turkey.  Located just uphill from the much smoother Crown Royal is a shallow corner with the pin about 25' up.

Start up the dike face just right of the corner before working over left.  Continue up to the pin and take a good at it before you push your chips into the pot.  Look up... that giant knob is close... so close.

Attack the roof, gain the knob and pull up.  By the way, that move is not 5.8.  Continue up and get established on the dikey slab headwall above.  Wind your way up, brushing lichen from dikes.  At some point falling will not be an option.  Eventually you will gain a series of right facing flakes which take some gear.  Right below a large dike the third flake is a good spot to belay and takes a couple hand size cams, about 150' up.

The second pitch continues up easy runout face.

Rick Sumner's old green Tahoe Rock guide says this about the route:  "Rack: webbing slings and one 2 1/2 chock. Climb up a groove to the right side of a large ceiling; then traverse left along the celing's lip until possible to face climb up left to a horn. Continue until out of rope, then belay. This route has less than marginal protection."

Funky flaring wide crack furthest to the right. This is definitely a Lover's testpiece. .10 doesn't get any harder than this at the Leap. This route is not a warm up.....it's a goal.

This route is located on the far right side of the lower Buttress.  It is a fast way to the upper tier, when there are lines on the Pillar.  The pitches can be combined into one long lead with a 60M rope. The climb follows large crack systems that you stem and face climb around.  The climbing is steep and a little runout, so it is probably not a great climb for a 5.5 leader.  The top pitch is on runout dike climbing.

Thin flaring crack right of Black Opal, and left of Blue Wind. Crux comes down low with a kinda sketchy bulge up high. Carefull where you place your gear, it might get in the way of a critical finger jam.

If you idea of a good time is is Dike hike'n this is a great route. I personally didn't mind the crack line but didn't care a lot for the mantel moves over dikes for the sole reason of not being able to get a good rhythm going up a nice crack.

Starts on the left hand wall of the crud gully to the right of Surrealistic that splits the lower buttress in two. Start up the face which leads directly into some interesting chimneys. When the first crack peters out, make some short moves across the face to the right and get into a wide crack/chimney above. Follow the chimney until you can exit on a sloping ramp and move out to the left into another gully. Belay here and finish the route with an easy pitch to the top.

Description

Location

Protection

Routes in Lower Buttress