Placeholder Routes & Places

Trip Report    

Basic Alpine Climb - Pinto Rock/Bowling Alley

A successful climb for a party of 12.

  • Road suitable for all vehicles
  • Bring a vehicle with good ground clearance.  The road is not in good condition for the last couple of miles to Pinto Rock.

Our climb party of 12 had not been to Pinto rock before so relied upon the online beta.   We arrived at the parking area at 9:00 AM and finding the correct gully to start from was easy.  For the first pitch, there is a tendency to go up a steep gully/chimney to the right.  The correct route is more to the left.  The rest of the route is straightforward.   There are lots of chickenheads to sling but a few areas do not have them readily available  For those locations, the bolts that are on the route are very handy.  Several of us took a limited amount of pro and there was very limited places to place.  If you take any, bring nuts and very small cams.  Large cams and hexes are too large for placement at Pinto.  The rock was dry and relatively solid for the Bowling Alley route.  It is grippy and more like climbing on the roughness of broken concrete that has protuberances to sling.  An occasional rock does get kicked out though.  Rappelling requires stepping onto a small ledge to start.  Once you descend to the bench, the rappeller should keep heading to the right for the remainder of the rappel.  Since this was an end of the season climb and we had a good weather forecast, I expanded the climb as rope leads expressed their desire to go.  So we grew to 12 and our overall time on the rock was more than originally planned.  The last rappeller was on the ground about 9:00 PM and we departed from the parking area at 9:30 PM.  Limiting the climb to 8 would be better from a time perspective.  However, we all had a great climb, wonderful views of Rainier, St. Helens, Adams, and Hood, a beautiful sunset, stellar view of the stars, and 4 of the Basics completed their last needed climb.  Pinto Pitch 1.pdf