The new route Dragons Tongue, left of Spiral Staircase. Courtesy of Rob Ginieczki

Let’s say you’d like to try some sport-mixed routes, but you aren’t into fruit boots and cranking figure-nines. Until recently, your options have been limited at East Vail, the mecca of modern mixed climbing. But this season, several new climbs have been added to the Firehouse West and Spiral Staircase areas, and at M6 to M7 these should be very attractive to experienced ice climbers looking to dabble in dry tooling.

Local climbers Brad Grohusky and Rob “Griz” Ginieczki have spearheaded the latest action. (Griz, by the way, operates a very effective, low-cost, mail-in screw sharpening service.)

Three new sport-mixed routes ascend the cliffs to the right of Lowe Gravity, Firehouse West. Courtesy of Rob Ginieczki

Many of these climbs have been posted at Mountain Project, but the locations are a bit confusing and the printed guidebooks are now way out of date. To sort out the new and old climbs, we’ve created a sequential list of all the routes in both areas. Updates? Corrections? Let us know…

Firehouse West
(left to right)
West Corner (WI3+ M4, trad, aka Leftmost of Left of Right)
West Slab (WI3+)
Meat Puppets (WI5 M7+, prow to curtain)
Lowe Gravity (WI4, aka Right of Right)
Eastern Xpansion (NEW, WI4+ M6+)
Rehab (NEW, M6+)
Modus Operandi (NEW, M7-)
Silver-Tongued Devil (WI5+ M6)
Unknown Trad (M6+, 150m west of other routes)

The very cool-looking unknown trad route, right of Firehouse West. Photo by Rob Ginieczki

Spiral Staircase Area
(right to left)
Secret Probation (WI5 M6-7)
Spiral Staircase (WI3-4)
Stemcicle (WI5 M7)
Log Route (WI3-4 M4-5)
Slabutt (WI3)
IMAPNISS (WI4+ M5)
Unnamed Verglas (WI4)
Tourettes (WI4- M6)
Dragons Tongue (NEW, WI5+ M7)
8mm (M7)
Menora (5.8+ WI4 M4-5)

Be aware that parking continues to be tricky in East Vail. For Firehouse, you must now park at one of the standard areas for the Rigid Designator area and walk east through town, or leave the car at Bighorn Park and walk west.

The Vail Daily reported that a 34-year-old climber from Alma fell about 100 feet on Tuesday afternoon when he was climbing the Fang in East Vail. Witnesses said the free-standing pillar, which just recently formed, had collapsed. Rescuers reached the injured climber in about 45 minutes, and he was evacuated to the hospital.