Cosmic Space Dust Lasers...
In all of the years I have been climbing, I have never done very much multi-pitch climbing. I've placed Pro and know how trad climbing works, but I just have never spent the money or invested a lot of time into trad climbing and all that it entails.
Rock Canyon has a pretty unique setup for some multi-pitch routes that are all sport. A 22 pitch limestone route called Squawstruck, that climbs the entire south face of Squaw Peak (1900 vertical feet). The guys at Mountainworks in Provo have done some awesome things to the local crags and are responsible for much of the development of the areas in Utah. There is really neat history about how American Fork Canyon and Rock Canyon were developed for sport climbing. Back to my point though. In the last 10 years the guys at Mountainworks have put up some longer multi-pitch routes that don't require any pro to be placed in a crack and such. Squaw Struck and other routes like Cosmic Space Dust Lasers only require a rack of draws as each pitch is bolted.
A few weeks ago, my brother and a good friend of mine all went to do the 9 pitches of Cosmic Space Dust Lasers. We did not get very far before the sun just destroyed us. We over heated and ran out of water. So last week I went back with my friend Rich and we got on the route early and did all 9 pitches of CSDL in just a couple of hours. Now granted, the route is only rated 5.10a, and I climbed all but one pitch in my Sportiva Raptors, but I was pretty dang tired when I got on the last pitch of the route. The last two pitches were pretty scary in the sense that the rock quality of the entire route is pretty poor. A lot of what I was standing on and pulling on seemed pretty sketchy and not very solid. The route needs a lot more traffic. Yes, I enjoyed climbing the route, but I hope that I don't have to do it more than one more time, when I go back with my brother to climb it, since he didn't get to join us this round.
Looking up at pitches 3-5
The view from pitch 4
Rich coming up the last few feet of pitch 7
Pitch 8
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