Extremely fun.  Head right after pulling the low roof and follow the ledge for several bolts.  Get a good rest before embarking on the quality overhang above.  Stay on your toes for several bolts of slopey, bouldery climbing.   

  Difficult to get back on after taking the huge whipper at the end of the crux.  A tighter catch helps there.

Inception

Slimy Arches

Heingerous

Legacy

Back Room

Generation Gap

Dune

Begin low and left in the amphitheater, work up and right through the first two bolts. Above the third bolt is the first bolt of legacy. From here follow the bolts through a series of side pulls, slopers, and edges to reach the final section. A technical slab wait for you at the top. Get psyched!

This is the large arching crack on the left side of the main amphitheater wall.  Large to medium sized gear will protect most of the route.  You can lower off of the sport route that meets the crack to avoid the somewhat chossy finish.  To get your money's worth, you can lower off of the anchors for Inception.

This route follows a crack system just left of the chimney on the right side of the amphitheater.  Climb the layback crack and plug some gear at the top of it to protect the bouldery moves to the first bolt.  Crank through the steep crux, place some gear, and relax once you can stem on the wall behind you.  The face above is bolted and moderate, but a little scary due to the amount of dirt and lichen, as well as the ledge below.   

  Rebolted May 2012.

This is the dihedral chimney on the right side of the amphitheater. 

  I know almost nothing about this route.  The name was provided by Jim.  The grade is a complete guess, only included because a grade is required to submit the route to the site. 

The route is split in half by a no hands ledge in the dihedral.  The bottom and top are of comparable difficulty, but with very different styles.  After the initial boulder problem, head straight up until the third bolt.  The route initially went straight up to a series of sloping horizontals above the bolt and then left.  Since then, a critical crimp has been considerably downsized.  It is probably easier now to do the bouldery traverse below the bolt, join the dihedral and climb up to the bolt.   

  After the rest ledge, head left and enjoy quality overhanging slopers to the anchors.  Be sure to give a soft catch for the upper crux, as you tend to swing into the slab below.

Slightly longer and more difficult than inception.  Follow inception until you get on top of the worm-like sloping feature with a crack running along the bottom.  Rather than clipping the sixth bolt on inception, clip a bolt to your right, and traverse this feature to the right for about 15 feet and head up out the roof. Three cruxes of increasing difficulty separated by mediocre rests will take you to the anchors. 

  As with Inception, it is HIGHLY recommended that you clean the first five or six draws on TR to avoid a dangerous swing.  It is easiest if you clean the anchors and all of the draws that you can reach easily while lowering, then toprope it to get the first ones.  Alternately, on the last go of the day, you can leap frog the draws on the traverse, cleaning as you go, then get the rest on lower.

This is the large amphitheater sporting a beautiful waterfall, accentuated by broken bottles, trash and graffiti around the fire pit under the overhang... the price of being close to town and in Southern Illinois. 

  The clean overhanging wall left of the waterfall is undercut by a large chossy roof, which is why all the climbs share a start on the left side of the wall.  By working these routes, if nothing else, you will absolutely dial the shared boulder problem that serves as a start to these routes. 

  Be sure to watch out for the large icicles that form above the shared start  during the winter.  They have been known to break free and bludgeon the heads of unwary belayers.

Description

Protection

Routes in Main Amphitheater