The GAG Route

This is a good route with some good stone and good moves. The position is improbable once up high and the presence of a few good holds in key places is what makes this thing possible for mere mortals. Absent a few key holds, this route would be much harder and perhaps dangerous.

This climb is a good climb overall, but is not to be taken lightly. It is a obscure desert route, not a trade route. Loose blocks, some lack of gear in places, generally in-obvious route finding, and other problems may present themselves to folks not enamored of desert towers.

If you are a qualified desert rat, however, this should be on your list of to-dos.

P1 (60', 5.9): Start on the right side in a crack with some blocks on a short pillar on the front of the North Sister and ascend 20 feet of 5.7 climbing to reach a short left-facing corner. An old fixed pin will be visible once you are into that corner, but not from the ground. Place a peice or two and start up the corner, clipping the pin and some more gear past an awkward move to reach a good ledge at perhaps 60' up. Traverse right on that ledge past a fixed rap and build a belay below a small square roof with a very think crack through it's right side.

P2 (130', 5.10): Go up to the roof and festoon the tiny crack out the right side with small stoppers and cams and a short sling or none. This will be crux protection. Move down and out under the roof back to low angle rock and head to the right. Climb up the face over there on slopers and insecure edges back up and to the right facing corner above the roof and the gear that was placed in it. If you fall here, you might hit the belayer, but not likely quite the ledge. Get into the corner just before a ledge fall seems likely and make the tough descision about going up to a better stance or messing with gear while facing a bad fall from awkward stances. I did the former and gunned it for a better stance before going for gear. Get some protection and head up into a crack and corner system that becomes a chimney, protecting whenever possible. You can stop and belay on 2 cams shoved down into the top of a crack on the right side 30' below the OW roof, or continue up past some loose rock to just below the OW roof at about 130' high. That higher belay will be on a 300 lb block on a sloping ledge that moves when you shift your weight. I built the belay there, having arrived, but then had my second settle in on the former option and belay there so as not to put 2 of us on the rocker-block on the sloping small ledge.

P3 (60', 5.10+): This is the money pitch and the crux. Place gear up in the roof. A 3" and 4" cam (or new #4 camamlot) work great. Look out to the right over space to see some small footholds high and under the roof, then a good foothold on the arete, just out of reach. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make your way out under that yawning crack though the roof (becomes 10") past though smears on a steep face to a stance in the outside of that crack with a foot on that hold.

If you fail, I will disavow all knowledge of calling this 5.10. It isn't "5.10" and "OW", it is "5.10 OW." But it is a spectacular sort of fun, and beta might spoil it, but both my partner and I had to get creative.

Continue past that crux and up into the slot that varies from OW to squeeze chimney. Crux protection there is a new-style #4 and #5 camalot. The #6 is too tight in most places, but I did eventually place it and was happy to have it since I did not have the #5 with me... (which I sorely wanted at a few points). Continue up the system for 20-30' of slow progress to a good belay ledge.

P4 (40', 5.7): Head north into a blocky but easy scramble to the top in a left-facing corner of jumbled rock. Belay from behind some big boulders.

Rap anchors are to the East, but are not well placed for a belay.

This Route lies just 100' or so left of the start of Jah Man and ascends the 'North Sister' which is attached to Sister Superior for the first 2 pitches of length, whereupon it splits into a second and independent summit.

The Gag Route climbs to this separate summit via a crack system on the West side.

A rack containing small to medium stoppers + 2Ea cams from tiny to fist + a #5 camalot + optional #6 camalot. 2 ropes to rap (60-70M)

The anchor was just refurbished in Oct 2014.