La Muerte 5.10

Climbed on December 13, 2025. 

Fun Rating: Mullet - business in the front and party in the back.

More like “a muerte” amirite?

“Boooooooo” - Readers of this blog.

My wife has been reading Joanne Urioste’s fantastic memoir, Collages of Rock and Desire, and we’ve been discussing her feelings as she’s read through. This has encouraged me to reflect a bit on what I’m doing here (very infrequently) on the blog. Mainly along the lines of “wow, what’s the point?” or “imagine if I did cool stuff like that.” I’ve heard that she mainly wrote the book while rehabbing from an injury because enough people had asked her to write her history of the area and it had finally gotten to the point where she had time time and motivation to get it done. I find it funny that this blog is almost the polar opposite of that. No one has asked for this and no one wants it, but I’m doing it anyway and no one can stop me!

Yes, a marvelous segue into the actual writeup of the route, and one that I think fits quite neatly into my feelings on La Muerte as a whole. Much like another Herbst route Zak and I had done, Echolalia, La Muerte is a line that has passed into the history books without much fanfare. With just a couple of sentences describing it between Joanne’s Red Book and the Handren guide, we were left with a lot of unknowns when we set off.

Zak at the start of the first pitch.

We’d been to the crag before to do The Growler and top rope Beelzebub, so we’d seen the crack (it’s obvious and visible all the way from the lot) but had never explored further for the start. As we made our way to what we presume to be the base, we realized just what kind of day this was going to be. A field of scrub oak stood between us and what I presumed to be the start, a tapering corner stocked with chockstones and dead trees. Zak didn’t want the offwidth pitch, and I very much did, so he took the first pitch. It probably went at about 5.7+ but was an absolute horror show with the loose rock and trees. I trundled some death blocks and a full sized dead tree while I was following. A proud lead despite the difficulty, all things considered.

This led to us standing on a comfortable ledge while I looked up at the next pitch with a feeling of unease. Multiple bulges with cryptic sequences led to a smooth offwidth pod that ended in a full sized tree growing outward from the wall. I wasn’t worried about the tree at that point, but I should have been. I took off and surmounted the first bulge with only a small amount of complaining and nonsense mutterings. “Why couldn’t I like limestone sport more? Why do I do this to myself? What is wrong with me?” My usual litany of self-encouragement, of course.

Moving into the tree.

Upon reaching the second bulge and slapping both a four and a five into various parts of the base of the offwidth above me, I contemplated asking for a take very hard. In the end the gear was solid and I decided to just have at and hope for the best. I ended up having to rely entirely on a suspect flake on the outside of the crack to reposition my feet before diving upward into a chicken wing. Once firmly established in the crack I was feeling much better momentarily. I say momentarily because that was how long it took me to catch my breath, steady my nerves, and look up. Upon that look I was rewarded with the discovery that the tree was very full, mostly dead, and entirely blocking access to the base of the chimney that forms the third pitch.

With a sigh, I grabbed what seemed to be the healthiest oof the living branches, yarded upwards to the top of the crack, and began gardening. I removed probably half of the tree, all of it dead and decaying, before I made a hole large enough that I could wiggle through with all the large cams hanging off my shoulder sling. As soon as I surmounted the tree and had all my weight on it I heard a horrible crack as the tree shifted downwards 8 inches or so. I wasn’t particularly run out at this point but I was at least a couple feet above a somewhat tipped out 5 and was very thankful that the tree didn’t rip out fully. I was able to swim into the crack and was rewarded with one of the most improbably comfortable belays I’ve ever had.

Zak deep in the heart of the big chimney pitch.

Zak made his way up to me with minimal issue and immediately cursed me for giving him the next pitch. Looking upward I was reminded of the intense chimney pitch on Crack of Infernity, and told him as much while reminding him that he led that one too. He shot me a look scolding look and took off, squeeze chimneying for about 50 feet before having to do a sheer chimney traverse to the outside of the crack to regain features. Some exposed technical climbing led to an awkward hand crack (3s and 4s) which ended at the top of the feature. Once I surmounted the last bit of actual climbing and joined Zak atop the pillar, I was immediately struck by the fact that there was nothing to rap off of here, and the closest thing we could see was a pine another 30 feet or so back down a separate chimney and ledge system. Zak gave me a body belay as I wriggled down and stepped over a yawning chasm before I returned the favor. 2 raps off of trees with 2 60m ropes got us back to the ground and enabled our long and annoying walkoff.

I don’t know how much to recommend this route, given the mixed experiences we had while climbing. The second and third pitches were both fantastic, hard, engaging, and had absolutely bulletproof rock quality. The first pitch was really quite poor and the amount of loose blocks of meaningful size, as well as large dead trees and tree limbs, led to a very un-fun experience. I think that with the foreknowledge of the tree rappels and being warned about the first pitch, this is still probably a 2 or 3 star climb, such is the quality of the upper pitches. It’s not for everyone and you’ll need to want to climb solid 5.10 OW in order to comfortably get up this without some aid techniques, but I never felt runout or like I was in peril outside of some rockfall. I think that for the more adventurous readers of the Herbst Tour, and pretty much anyone going up to the East Face of Rainbow Mountain, La Muerte would be a worthwhile climb and one you’ll definitely remember.

An ancient leather strap found in the descent gully. The only sign of humans the whole day.

Zak bushwhacking to the first pitch.