In June, Ryan Evans and Damien Nicodemi invited me to help them complete a full-length version of One for the Ladies, a 12-pitch route they had established on the upper southeast side of Tehipite Dome in July 2021. They accessed this portion of the wall by hiking down the drainage just west of the summit and traversing east on a major ledge system, starting climber’s right of the 1963 Beckey Route, the first route up Tehipite’s huge south face. 

Over two days, we added 2,600’ of new climbing from the valley floor—or as we called it, the “sit start”—to reach the main ledge and the beginning of the 2021 climbing. We accessed the valley floor by traversing in on the main ledge and then rappelling Dave Nettle’s Wall of Ages route, which we equipped for rappel by adding carabiners to each bolted anchor. Our new terrain begins climber’s right of the Wall of Ages and takes a plumb line through a large offwidth and chimney system, which we dubbed The Maw. Damien, Ryan, and I rotated leads, climbing almost entirely free.

I racked up for the first pitch at dawn and was quickly confronted with a challenging section of thin cracks through a small roof. After taking the only fall on the wall, I found beta that worked and freed it. Ryan took over for a traversing pitch leading left into the bottom of The Maw. Damien was then blessed with the opportunity to do some vertical gardening on pitch three to get us fully established into the major crack system. From here, we encountered steep corners and chimneys; a yucca plant that required us to place a bolt so that we could face climb around it; more chimneys, a pendulum, an airy offwidth, thin stemming, and an offwidth; and then more offwidths to reach a major ledge. Some scrambling and a short rivet ladder brought us to the large wooded ledge halfway up the wall known as Sherwood Forest, where we built a campfire and enjoyed a marvelous bivy.

On the two pitches above Sherwood Forest, we discovered a bolt and some signs of prior passage. After discussion with David Nettle, it seems that from Sherwood Forest his party climbed several pitches of the Beckey Route before moving onto new terrain on Wall of Ages, so these signs of past travel remain a backcountry mystery. Damien led pitch 12 up a large corner system. A short section of scrambling put us on the main ledge directly underneath the original half of One for the Ladies. We traversed along the ledge to a comfortable camp on the shoulder of the dome before returning the following morning to finish the climb to the summit. 

The upper portion of the route, from 2021, begins with three pitches of enjoyable aid and free climbing, angling right into a huge roof-capped corner. Pitch 17 follows a bolt ladder through the roof and out onto an exposed headwall. Several pitches up a major corner system, through immaculately featured rock, lead to a few pitches of lovely bolt clipping and the summit.

In general, the climb feels modern in that we protected it with bolts when gear was not abundant and added bolted anchors when natural ones were inconvenient. But it feels old-school in the amount of physically demanding wide crack climbing. All told, the full version of One for the Ladies goes at VI 5.10 C1+ and is 3,600’. The name honors the women in our lives who love and support us. 

— Matt Carpenter