My Favorite Way: The Standard Direct, First Flatiron, Colorado
The Standard Direct, aka the Direct East Face, aka the Direct Route, First Flatiron II-III 5.6R, 10 pitches.*
Finally got to climb this deserved classic while visiting the in-laws last week! With rain and thunder and lightning every day, we found one morning that we thought there was a window.
With an in-your-face visibility from miles away, the bubbling college town of Boulder bordering the park, and only a 30 minute approach at a casual walking pace, this deserved classic-status-climb is also deservedly popular. Check your expectations and enjoy the community experience! It does help to do it on weekdays.
This route has been soloed in 7 minutes, and is popular with the solo/trail running crowd. It’s also been the setting for too-many-to-count rescues and fatalities of wanna-be Killian Jornet and Alex Honnolds. You do you.
We relied primarily on Mountain Project for our information, but there are +100 photos that are almost entirely summit selfies and us-ies. I screen shot-ed the beta photos I thought were the most useful, and I included them here with one of my own.
This is 80% what we did, and 20% what I’d do next time.
* Mountain Project describes this as a 10-pitch route, so I will too. You’ll see my pitch count is a lot less.
Recommended Rack:
Bullet packs for both (as opposed to one pack for the follower)
Standard harness, lockers, belay devices
60m or even a 70m rope, with a mid-mark
5 cams, 0.4-2 (grey to yellow)
6 stoppers, #5-#10
5 shoulder slings with carabiners for “alpine draws”
2 double-shoulder slings (mine are racked with a single carabiner each, and double as rappel tethers)
Approach: From your car, hike 30 minutes or so to the base of the climb.
You can leave your pack here, with the caveat that there are all types of people hiking by less than 10m away. If I was a bad person, I’d have a nice new Hyperlite pack today. But I’m a good person. You do you.
Pitch 1: +55m. 2 bolts, and 2-3 cam placements. Belay from the tree-ledge, but DON’T USE THE TREE! The belay can be an awesome seat with two cams.
Pitch 2: Head up as straight as you dare towards the left of the first roof. With a 70m rope you can reach an awesome stance on horns. With a 60m rope you can still reach a great horizontal crack for gear.
Pitch 3: Climb up and left around the first roof, then right and over the second roof. With a 70m rope you can reach the “20-person ledge” described in MP. With a 60m rope you’ll end just short of the 20-person ledge but on still-a-great-ledge-for-four-people. The ledge is so deep that I did a hip belay from a seated stance and didn’t build an anchor. Then I bumped up to the next ledge and kiwi-coiled in all the extra rope, and did a seated hip belayed again.
NOTE: My pitch 2-3 was MP’s pitch 2-4.
Pitch 4: Climb up to a great ledge underneath and left of the “Great Roof”. You could do this in one big pitch if you didn’t coil up the rope, or in 2-3 short pitches if you want to have proper belays, or simul-solo up like we did. I’d call this pitch 3rd class.
Pitch 5: Up and left around the roof through the chimney/slot, gain the ridge and go left to a ledge with a tree.
Pitch 6: This is described as 2-4 pitches long in MP. We coiled up all but 20m of rope (about 60ft), and simul-solo’ed until we got to a steep step, then stopped and built a quick belay (most often a bomber stance and a belay device off the waist).
Summit!
Descent: You can down climb and down scramble the highest (and shortest) East Face route (5.2) or a great two-bolt anchor allows for a +25m rappel to the ground. Another 30 minute hike (it’s all downhill) leads to the car and we found frosty beverages a short drive away..
We spent 3 hours and 30 minutes on route. Actually 4 hours because of a slightly slower team ahead of us, but I paused the clock when we needed to wait. I bet we could have easily shaved 15-30 minutes if we wanted to be more efficient, but we moved smoothly and had fun.
Would I go back? Every time I can!
