Hybrid Drive

To the left of the main section of the Black Velvet wall lies a beautiful pillar of rock with black varnish. There is a storied history of climbing and attempts on this wall, but talking with Larry and Joanne and others has indicated that this feature has hid in plain sight for decades! Hybrid Drive takes the proudest and most classic line to the top of this buttress. It is Comparable in quality to the famous routes to the right. The route starts on Spark Plug, easily one of the best  splitter cracks of its size in Black Velvet.

P1 5.10b 120’ “Spark Plug” Climb the amazing, splitter crack to a decent stance with a bolted anchor.

P2 5.9 90’ Continue up the crack past a short wide section to a massive ledge. There is an obvious pillar above you here, climb the right side of the pillar with awesome varied crack to a belay ledge on top of the pillar and another bolted belay.

P3 5.9+ PG-13 70’ Face climb up and right. Make somewhat runout moves to a fixed piton. Continue traversing right to a good crack. Follow this with great chocolate varnish to a bolted belay at a stance halfway up the face.

P4 5.9 70’ Start straight up the crack above the anchor, traverse to the right to a second crack, follow this up slightly steeper terrain to an excellent belay ledge.

P5 5.10a 80’ Start up the obvious right facing corner. After a short bit make an unprotected (5.8) traverse left onto the varnished face, continue up and left until you reach a crack. Follow the crack to an anchor at a hanging belay. You can protect the 5.8 runout by continuing up the corner, placing and extending a high piece before down climbing back to the traverse point.

It is possible to rappel from this point with a single 60M rope. The climbing on the first 5 pitches is the most classic, though climbing to the top makes for a great adventure!

P6 100’ 5.10a PG-13 Climb straight up off the belay with great hidden gear. Make sure not to miss the crucial micro cam placement before the seam pinches. Follow the seam to an obvious horizontal weakness, traverse the horizontal all the way to the base of the butt crack roof. Climb up the butt crack on way better rock than it appears. Pull the roof then follow the flare up to a cramped alcove ledge for a belay.

P7 150’ 5.8 Continue up the flare, stemming and face climbing. The flare soon pinched off. Face climb straight up, following good cracks to a great ledge.

P8 60’ 5.0 Move the belay up and right to an even larger ledge.

From this ledge it is possible to easily climb over to the upper pitches of refried brains. Only do this if you plan to summit, the upper pitches of Refried Brains are not currently set up well for rappel. Or continue to the top of the tower to do the standard descent. 

P9 100’ 5.7 Climb the ramp and groove that heads up and right. Follow this to the top of the tower. On the FA Eric climbed the overhanging wall above via its central crack at 5.10R. This was a fun pitch but ended up being a bit spicy and unnecessary. 

Descent: From the top of the tower, make your way to the back side of the ledge. Find a rappel anchor on the uphill side of the ledge. Make a single 35M rappel into the canyon. This is an established canyoneering route. Head down, downclimbing and rappelling when obvious. Once at the base of the canyon it is possible to skirt the wall with a short exposed scramble to return to the base, or to cross the gully to link into the descent for Only the Good Die Young. The OTGDY descent cuts some walking off on the way out if you didn’t leave anything at the base. 

Style and History: We believe we did the first ascent of 4 of the 8 pitches. We originally climbed the diagonal crack system to the left of P3/4. This is crispy and not recommended. We found and cleaned some bail gear in this crack. We ended up at the ledge at the top of 4, with a mottley mess of rap anchors around. We decided to lower in and inspect the face for potential gear. To our surprise we discovered a new anchor with the same hardware as the asca anchors below, suggesting that Spark Plug had previously been extended to 3 pitches. We climbed up to the roof skipping the hanging belay at pitch 5. The webbing on top of 5 was weathered completely gone! There was a stamped bolt on top of 5 that we left in place for historical context, “DEE”. Larry and Joanne suggested this could be Dave Evans. When I reached out to him he said that was indeed his hanger, but he did not place it! When we came back we led the face on P3/4 and cleaned up and updated existing rappel anchors. We believe we did the FA of pitches 4,6,7 and 8/9. 

The route starts on “Spark Plug”, which lies a couple hundred yards uphill and to the left of the main section of Black Velvet Wall.