Climb the wide crack that has good face holds to make it easy. Then traverse left to the first bolt. Head straight up the bolt line to the anchors. The crux, around the second bolt, is very short lived. Sharp holds and the unsustained nature make you desiring something more. Fortunately, many of its neighbors are much better.

Ostracized

Psycho Wrangler

Q-tip

Ass Waxer

Fireman's Belay

Love Sock

Fingers

End of Innocence

Tamarin

Cotton the Act

Cotton Gin and Tonic

Audiophering

The Wurst Route at the New

Final Twilight

We Got Problems

Wild and Wonderful

Incident

98% Cotton

Tainted Love

Cottonmouth

The Rheesist

Intergalactic Orcas

Johnny Chimpo

Bio-Slab

Cottonhead

Mighty Fine Shindig

Tricky for the grade, this is the only route under 5.10a at Cotton Top.  A bulging arête.

This is the route worth coming to this area for. Begin on less than vertical terrain below the first bolt and climb up to the first in a long series of jugs and tiered roofs.  After clipping the third bolt, there are a few moves to get back into the unbelievably good holds.  Find a lay down or good kneebar rest, clip the 5th draw, and then begin the 5.12- climbing for the last 2 bolts.  The climbing up to the 5th draw is well below the stated difficulty grade for this route.

Two distinct cruxes on this route.  One just after the first bolt, and one to get to the 4th bolt.  Proper body position relative to the small holds will get you through it.  The top half of the route is good clean fun on plated jugs, but the pump clock is ticking because it's just barely overhung and after the crux at mid height, you'll likely still be a bit pumped.

This route branches off of Intergallactic orcas to the right.

Clip the first bolt on it and do a hard move on a hold that resembles the blade of a butter knife.

Bolted anchors.

A bad fall from the top could leave you sliding down the tree on your butt hence the name.

On the corner left of Cotton Gin and Tonic. Starts with a roof-like move and ends on a tricky slab.

On the face left of "Tainted Love", there are two sport routes.  This is the right sport route and climb the clean face about 10 feet left of the obvious dihedral crack.

This is actually a nice route once you get past the spider webs.

Climb the angled ramp up to the big wide pod/chimney. Pull some cool moves out of the pod, then follow the crack up and eventually left.  A final small roof lies before a somewhat dirty finish.

Begin off a small angular block and pull some moves to a challenging second clip.  Then head straight up the wall on some really nice balancing sidepull maneuvers to a crank to a left crimp and a deadpoint for the rail below the roof (crux).  Clip the last bolt and keep it together on outrageous holds towards the anchors.

Fun slab climbing to a jump move around the 4th bolt. Finish up through the roof.

If you like techy face climbs, you're going to like this one.   However, if it becomes too popular, I think the top flake below the crux is going to deteriorate.   Start at a low overhang and pull up on to the thin face.   From here, it's just connecting the dots between small flakes with fairly sustained moves.   After your reach the flexing flake just below the 5th bolt, the crux hits you hard!  Lots of very small crimps and big reaches to the finish.   This feels hard for 5.11d.

Did this in September and it was covered in leaves and lichen.

There is a some technical crimping above the middle bolt and a really far reach or jump move protecting the anchors.

Just to the right of Fingers, you'll see a bolt line that angles up and left through overhanging terrain on good holds.  It's tough to see the top half of the route from the ground, but after pulling on top of a ledge at 4th bolt, the route continues up more vertical and technical terrain for the last 3 bolts to shuts at the top.  The book gives this zero stars, but it's worth doing.

A nice little bouldery route.

Start with some techy movement to get established at the first bolt, then make a big deadpoint/dyno to an obvious jug at the second bolt (keep an attentive belay here to avoid body-slamming your climber).

One more large move brings you to some nice jugs from which you clip bolt three and ponder the final cruxy moves. Several viable sequences exist here - commit to one and aim for the slopey ledge below the shuts.

For such a short route, it packs in a good amount of powerful climbing. Worth doing if you're hankering for some roped bouldering.

Classic easy roof problem.  Start as far back and left as you can, move out right on jugs before mantling up to the ledge.

A neat lil route if you've done Psycho Wrangler and missed waiting in line. Start by doing the first 3 bolts of Psycho to a roof. Make a few thuggy moves before balancing up the crispy dihedral to the chains.

Great crimpy traverse that is more enduro than cruxy.

A bouldery start leads to easy climbing for three bolts to a no hands. Pull a mini roof with some long pulls to flat edges, then face climb on good holds to the final roof. A long clip back to the anchors might be the crux.

Keep heading "climber's left" past the uber-classic psycho wrangler to find the short bolted seam, Tainted Love. Unfortunately for crack climbers you won't find a single finger lock on this route, instead you'll be crimping, hanging onto to finger buckets, and making reaches for all you're worth.

At the 4th bolt you'll enter the crux. Figure out a way to utilize the crappy left hand sidepull, pull up to an ear, grab a crimp, stand really tall with piss poor feet and  grab another crimp, and then stab out right to a jug rail. Clip the route's last bolt and hope you don't botch the powerful ending.

I hear this route is nearly impossible if you are under 5'6" but I personally wouldn't let that hold me back. Where there's a will, there's a way. With that said, there is no way I could do this thing if I was a few inches shorter.

Begin at the right end of the wall on slabby territory with positive holds until you encounter the beautiful orange rock above. Make a couple of moves to a small letterbox slot, then crank consistent sustained moves on the gently overhanging headwall. This route is quite pumpy and might feel a letter sandbagged. It would also go on solid gear if you felt so inclined - good horizontals throughout with solid placements.

This climb and others on this section of wall see consistent runoff up to a few days after a heavy rain.

This is a really fun, gymnastic route that has both steep, thuggish climbing, and delicate crimpy moves up top.  Begin by soloing up easy terrain to the left of Psycho Wrangler.  At the base of the roof, clip a long draw to the bolt in the back, get into a strenuous position on a glued flake for clipping the first of several perma-draws, and bust out a hard move to a jug out right.  A few moves of easy steep climbing takes you to a hard clip and a pair of nice pockets, off of which you do the crux dyno.  After this point you get a great recovery jug before moving into a very thin, techy sequence up the vertical headwall above, and one more little roof pull.

This route is great if you're looking for an all out power endurance challenge.  Give yourself an extra letter grade of credit if you're able to send while hanging the draws!

It's a smart idea to stick clip the first bolt before traveling through some suspect rock.  Don't be surprised if you find yourself locking off on slopers to make each clip.  It seems like each clip is harder than the one before it.

Move quickly through continuous slopers with hardly any holds to shake out on.  There are a couple long reaches between the second and third bolts, but other than that it's just a pump management game as you paddle from sloper to sloper.

This super fun line takes jugs and pockets out of the deepest part of the Cotton Top cave.  Drop off the lip.

This is great climb and serves well as a warm up for some of the other harder lines in the area.  Climb the white face straight up to reach the overhang.   The finish is a bit pumpy as the crux is reaching the anchors.  Beware of climbing this after rain. Runoff from the top of the cliff conveniently seeps into the crux hold, while the lower rock may be completely dry.

Crouch start on a jug on the left side of the cave. Climb left past pockets to finish on the jugs.

Description

Location

Protection

Routes in Cotton Top