On August 10, Greg Horvath and I established a new route on the east pillar of Mt. Barnard (13,680’), which is ca 3 miles north of the Mt. Whitney massif. I first eyed the route a year earlier during an ascent of the east pillar on which Mike Maiden and I failed to locate the Rowell-Auger (AAJ 1973) and instead established a line with six new pitches up to 5.9.

The Good, The Bad, The Awesome (1,500’, IV 5.11) follows a prominent right-facing dihedral system beginning about 20’ above the lowest point of the wall. After 800’ it intersects the northeast arête. We climbed mostly in the corner itself and once reaching the arête climbed splitter finger cracks up to 5.11. While the rock quality ranges from poor to excellent, the climbing predominantly consists of enjoyable 5.10 cracks. We climbed the route onsight, swapping leads, and found perfect belay ledges every 60m to 70m.

– Doug Tomczik