Early July found Jon Griffin and me below Third Recess Peak in the Mono Recesses, a series of hanging valleys west of Mono Pass. Our friends Austin Siadak and Matt Van Biene had climbed a route to the left of the line Serving Detention (IV 5.10, Harden-Miller, AAJ 2003) in the summer of 2013, and I had visited the area twice before only to be shut down by late-season storms. Austin and Matt’s line, Strange Dreams in the Spirit of Barnes (IV 5.10), featured a very obvious pitch containing three splitter cracks side by side soaring toward a steep and intimidating offwidth. Matt had mentioned that when they reached the wide stuff they had veered right before continuing up to the summit ridge—he thought it would be worth bringing some wide gear and straightening out their line.

Midmorning on the 10th of July, Jon and I started up some steep corners in between Strange Dreams in the Spirit of Barnes and Serving Detention. We climbed three long pitches up to 5.10 until we met up with the beautiful Triple Splitters pitch. The rock was good yet friable. This pitch extended a full rope length to a small alcove beneath an overhanging fist crack. Glad to have lugged the big cams, we found this pitch to be the crux of the route—absolutely stellar overhanging wide hands to fists, just off vertical number 6 offwidthing, and a steep physical number 5 flare up a hanging flake to finish it off. We continued up three more long simul-climbing pitches of 5.8 to the summit ridge, the last of which was the most laser-cut splitter of the route, completing Sprim Jockey (8 pitches, IV 5.10c)

From the summit, we continued south along the ridge (mostly 4th class) until we were able to bend down and to the east on ledges and ramps back to camp at Third Recess Lake.

– Tad McCrea