
Trip Report
Acid Baby - Asgard Sentinel
A one day climb of a classic 10+ in the Enchantments
- Sat, Aug 3, 2024
- The Enchantments
- Climbing
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
With the Enchantment crowds in mind, my climbing partner Mike and I got to the trailhead in the dark to ensure that we were able to get a parking spot. Our objective was Acid Baby, a 7 pitch 5.10+ alpine route known for splitter cracks and awesome rock in a dreamy alpine location. Acid Baby climbs a sub summit of Enchantment Peak known as Asgard Sentinel, (although there has been some confusion around the name, it could also be Jaberwocky Tower or Spineless Prow) which is located on the Northeast side of Asgard Pass.
A 4:30 am start from the parking lot had us hiking up with the early risers doing the Enchantments through hike but no other climbers. Colchuck Lake, the first major landmark on the trail is 4 miles from the trailhead, then you work your way around the lake, through some campsites to a boulder field and the start of Asgard Pass.

The start of the route is about 3/4 of the way up Asgard Pass on a little outcropping of trees on the left hand side. I was worried about not being able to spot it, but it was easy to recognize. We got the base of the route around 8:30am, took some time to repack bags, gear up, and have a snack before I set off the first pitch around 9am. Mike has a thing against grovelly climbing and absolutely did not want to do p5 as it was described as a V-slot, so I got the odd pitches and he got the even ones. I think this worked out so that he ended up getting both of the 10+ pitches, but there seem to be some differing opinions.
The first pitch was a great 5.9 romp up some hand cracks and ends at a ledge at the base of a wide corner, the first crux pitch. I thought p1 was great fun and we dispatched it quickly.

We swapped gear and Mike started up the wide corner system of p2. We had heard that this was the physical crux of the route and I have to agree. Mike was able to style it, but I had to huff and puff a bit carrying our shoes and water in the followers pack. (Side note, I kind of hate having a followers pack, but this route seemed hard enough that I didn't want water and approach shoes hanging off my harness when I was trying to lead.) By 10:15 we were both at the P2 anchor and I was grabbing the gear for p3.
It seems like p3 is where people get a bit confused. There are apparently 2 ways to go, a chimney and a slab. Both are said to have loose rock. I opted for the chimney which had me going up and left below an undercling, then up the chimney/gully feature until you pop out the top and traverse and down climb right across a slab to get to the base of a wavy wide hand crack. The entire time I was on this pitch I wasn't really convinced that I was going the right way, the beta is a little sparse. There was a bit of loose rock, but not anything other than what you would expect in the alpine, maybe its cleaned up a bit since the last reports. Once I got to the top of the chimney I was able to see across the slab traverse to a set of rap anchors slung over a horn at the base of the next pitch. I guess you just have to keep climbing up and have faith.

P4 was the second crux (at least according to me, I think mountainproject has the difficulty of the pitches listed incorrectly). This is where a 4 can come in useful as you ascend a 5.8 wide fists crack then traverse left to a stem/thin technical crux. Mike wasn't quite sure when to start traversing and ended up downclimbing a bit to get into the correct corner. The gear here is pretty small and offset nuts and very small cams came in handy here. Following this pitch with a pack was pretty physical as well, I did moves I would never do on lead!

When I got up to the belay, Mike was jammed into the v-slot on P5. The belay wasn't very comfy here so we immediately switch gear and I stepped on him to get into the slot. Mike doesn't like offwidth or grovelly climbing but I actually thought that this part of the pitch was pretty tame for offwidth. Nothing in comparison to the OW pitch on Borderline that we did earlier in the summer.
Above the v-slot you come to a small roof split by a thin hands crack. I looked at this feature as it seemed the most obvious line and stuck a few pieces under the lip. It was pretty strenuous to hang out there so I started to move up when I saw that there was an easier exit up a small break in the roof about 10 feet to the right. Silly me! Trying to make it harder on myself. I went around through the gully and up to a long, narrow ledge below a lower angle corner. Looking down, I could see some chalked up holds above that roof section, so some people must go that way!

It was 1:30pm at this point, so we weren't moving as quickly as we had in the beginning of the day, but still managing a pretty good pace. I had a quick snack and belayed Mike up an easy corner and hand crack system to the base of the prow and final pitch.

At last, the final, exposed traverse that is one of the reasons there are so may photos of this route. P7 traverses along a narrow ridge line, over several gendarmes to a final downclimb where the feature connects to Enchantment Peak. Traverses can be a bit difficult to protect and this was no different. I spent some time trying to figure out how to get around the first gendarme. Do I go around to the right? I thought most of the beta said to stay on the lake side? I tried both sides and got into some very runout territory covered in lichen. Neither of those could possibly be the way, so I guess I have to go up and over.

I didn't initially see any footholds to surmount the chest height block, which is why I explored going around, but I was finally able to spot a couple of high footholds and drag myself onto the top of the block. Not very hard, but also not very intuitive. The rest of the traverse was runout and easy but I made it to the final anchor location with a good amount of rope drag.

Once Mike met me at the top, it looked like there was a bit of exposed scrambling left to get to the actual walk off, so we stayed roped up for an easy scramble pitch down to the kitty litter gully. In hindsight, this was probably unnecessary, but seemed like a good idea at the time. We stopped to change our shoes, have some water and food and read the directions on how to get back to our packs.
There are 2 ways get down. One is a longer but less complicated hike up to the top of the Enchantment plateau and down around to Asgard and the other is to take an improbably looking gully. We opted for the longer but easier hike and set off up the hill. This might have been the worst part of the day. We ended up on a ton of tiny scree that moved every time you stepped on it. More annoying than dangerous, but it made hiking uphill after the end of a 1000ft route super frustrating.

We were back to our packs by 6pm and headed down the rest of Asgard with the masses.
Notes
- We took double .2-3 and a single 4, with an extra .2 and .3 and a set of nuts. Next time I would probably leave the 4 and the extra set of small cams at home, but make sure to bring the small offset nuts an a few extra slings. 60 m rope
- Trailhead to Base: 4 hours
- Base to Base: 9 hours
- Base to Trailhead: 3.5 hours