Papoose Rock, Hallucination Route. This 450-foot route on the west face is the most difficult yet done on Papoose. It follows several non-continuous crack lines just left of the middle of the face and turns a major ceiling and then a prominent yellow triangle on an overhang: both of these sections require direct aid where pitons have to be placed upside-down under roofs. Some of the difficult free moves were hard to protect on the extremely polished granite. We had to place several bolts while standing on minute holds. A number of “cracks” turned out to be shallow grooves, which could only be climbed by use of tied-off and sometimes nested wide- angle pitons of different sizes and shapes. Curtis Stout and I started the climb but we were forced to a halt by rain and lack of time. Eric Bjornstad and I completed the route on October 25. We used 42 pitons and 13 bolts.

Fred Becky