During the summer of 2017, Adam Sheppard, Daniel Jeffcoach, and I went out to Bubbs Creek Wall and attempted a line left of the Samurai Warrior/Ronin (V 5.12a) and Crystal Bonzai (VI 5.11 A3). We climbed to a dihedral toward a huge, guillotine-like flake/overhang nearly halfway up the wall. This flake was sharp, the size of a small car, and was jammed in the overhang above in a way that made its presence on the wall a small miracle. Daylight ran out when I was still 40’ below the scary object and we had a great reason to bail. For the next year, we wondered how to deal with this obstacle.

In May of 2018, Daniel and I returned to find answers. On the first day we approached from Road’s End and climbed two pitches to a large ledge. On day two we climbed to our previous high point, where I clipped the retreat gear I had left and continued up the nice crack for another 15’ before making a wild face traverse to the arête left of the dihedral. I continued up cool face features and flakes, and was able to slide some small gear behind them, which allowed passage to a ledge above the guillotine flake, all free and on natural gear. We continued free climbing up the crux 5.11 finger crack above and into another corner system, which we followed to a huge ledge where we bivied.

Unfortunately, we needed to use aid for about 20’ off the bivy ledge. This was the only aid required on this 2,000’ climb, which is mostly of great quality. We topped out in the afternoon on the third day; I believe future ascents could be done in a long day or maybe two shorter days. In keeping with the other route names on this wall (Samurai Warrior, the Emperor, and the Sensei), we dubbed it the Panda Express (VI 5.11 A1).

– Vitaliy Musiyenko