Ascent Notes for: Mercury's Lead - 5.9 Average Rating : 4.40/5

Second full length route of the day that I lead all pitches. Quite fun and not very difficult.

I was feeling a little nervous at first, even though I have climbed this route before, and ended up climbing Yardarm to get going. Once the jewels came back, I was able to zip right up all three pitches. There is some runout but the holds are excellent. The little mini ledges are awesome and the only slick spots I encountered were down low. After the second bolt, the texture of the rock becomes more stable and the friction is great. I could step anywhere and have traction. I combined the second and third pitches and belayed from the rings on top of the Arch. This is a really fun route and really isn't that difficult.

Nice winter climbing day at Stone. Climbed first pitch only.

Fun route, pretty consistent throughout - lots of small features make the feet actually feel fairly secure. Could have done without such a huge runout though...

Beautiful quality of rock and a pure line.

Seconded all but the last extremely easy pitch: followed up the 2nd pitch and then just kept going, clipping the single draw before topping out.

Fun, but it's another "must not fall" kind of route. It gets a bit easier near the top before you reach the cam placements (mid-sized). Pretty consistent slabbing most of the route.

This is a very sustained 5.9 climb well past the 2nd bolt.Crux is slick , about half way up to the 1st bolt.Be comfortable at this grade to lead.

A little spicy up to about the second bolt on the first pitch, but then you get your pace down and the angle gets easier.

Climb is stellar! First route to the right of the arch. First pitch has two bolts, then plug a cam in the crack above the ledge, (I used a Rock Empire #1, about 1in size), then traverse right and up to the belay. Second pitch has two bolts, one is easy to see and is about 20ft above the belay, the second is about 60ft up and you can't see it for a while.

No comment