Rock Creek Prow and Charlie's Prow Proj.

The prow in the talus, by the tree, at Rock Creek was climbed from a standing start by Charlie Barrett a couple of weeks ago. I believe this was the first ascent, though if I'm wrong about that, let me know. The way he climbed it was to pull on using a very glassy undercling/sidepull for the left hand, and a pinch on the arete for the right. The first move involves putting a right heel high on the arete and making a huge slap up. It's a hard and intimidating move where your left hand is liable to spit off to send you spiralling down the talus:

Charlie on the Prow (stand), first move.

The next move involves a similarly intimidating dyno for a decent high-friction wrapper that is impossible to see exactly, but is good if you hit it--so I'm told! It needs a tick mark a foot long... though of course we don't use tick marks, and even if we did, we'd brush them off later, or at the very least photoshop them out!

Charlie on the Prow (stand), second move.

After this, the problem is as good as over: there's not a lot to it but those two hard moves. Adam Thomason repeated it, after taking a little while to psyche up. Supposedly the problem is in the v8 or v9 range, but I confess I found both those two moves super-hard, and didn't do either of them, as being shorter seemed to make them exponentially more difficult and intimidating for me. Plus, I suck!

I found an entirely different problem that climbs the same feature, but stays on the right of the arete. I began with my right hand on the pinch on the arete, but used a small crimp next to it for my left hand. From there, I could throw a heel and roll to a tiny crimp on the right side of the arete and again up the arete to another hidden crimp, which I shared before pulling through for a jug. This also felt about v8 or v9 and is a little highball.

It is clear that the big prize is a sit-start to Charlie's version, which he worked on a couple trips. It has big squeezing dynamic moves on poor holds out a very steep piece of rock. It will be one of the hardest problems in the Bishop area when it goes.

Charlie on the third move of the sit-start proj #1.