North America, United States, California, Sierra Nevada, Conness, Plan B

Publication Year: 2002.

Conness, Plan B. In June Paul Teare and I went in to Conness with a plan to climb the Harding Route, while keeping a keen eye on the possibility of something new. We realized our fate when we saw two climbers above us heading toward the Harding Route. Something new it would be. We were drawn to two prominent orange corners at about midheight on the right side of the southwest face. A short first pitch up a right-facing corner puts you at the base of a beautiful dogleg finger crack. Another easy pitch up and left aligns you with the leftmost of the two prominent right-facing corners. A short undercling and funky lieback on featured, clean rock takes you to the corner. From the top of the corner, an undercling left puts you on a nice ledge. Follow the ledge right for about 60 feet until you reach a thin crack leading to a small, steep left- facing corner. This steep corner ends for 10 feet and begins again higher. Linking this gap with very interesting face climbing is the crux of the route. This route is very clean and well worth repeating. After returning home and researching Conness, we found that the prominent corner to the right, which shares the same dogleg crack, is the Rosy Crown Route, which also looks great. Our route, Plan B (V 5.11-), is seven mostly 60-meter pitches.

Jimmy Haden