The Pyramid

Here are some beta and photos of “The Pyramid”. Although not really hidden at all I found it with a fly-by in my plane of Egyptian Ridge, not that far away. Betsy and I went to explore and because we wanted to put up a new route we ignored the obvious fine handcrack, especially because it had a piton in it. It turns out Rick Sumner had only recently climbed that crack (and put in the piton) and had named it Dreamliner.

Location: 40.405629, -119.284798

Directions: Drive past Pyramid Lake on route 447 for 41 miles past Nixon, Nevada. The right hand turnoff is a rough, dirt cattle road with a “leave-it-as-you-found-it” BLM public gate. If you go to the next right hand turn that is the well-traveled dirt road that goes up to the pass where Egyptian Ridge is located. Go through the gate and drive towards the Pyramid, easily visible. When Betsy and I did this it had rained. We got our van stuck in the mud Friday night and had to wait for the mud to dry out until Sunday for us to get it out.

Approach: Hike up to the base, then go up the left ridge and across on the bushy ledge if you just want to go up to the face where Visions of Empire and High Desert Solitaire starts (and the second fine pitch of Dreamliner). Approach up the middle to do the full Dreamliner route, and approach on the right side past the obvious buttresses if you want to climb The Hourglass and then you can rap down to the face climbs.

From the very bottom Betsy and I put up one nice climb (Bodie Dreams) up an orange buttress (5.9) putting in three bolts and also a top ring anchor for a full 35 meter rappel (70 meter ropes only!) This rap is also usable for the first pitch of Dreamliner.

Dreamliner is the fine handcrack that starts at the very bottom, but surprisingly continues after the big bushy ledge. It’s a classic put up by Rick Sumner et al.

Dreamliner:

Pitch one 160′ 5.9.
Pitch 2 190′ 5.9. Pitch
Pitch 3 150′ 5.7 to the top.
Rap anchor at the top

Hike up to the base, then go up the left ridge and across on the bushy ledge if you just want to go up to the face where Visions of Empire and High Desert Solitaire starts (and the second fine pitch of Dreamliner).

Up on this big bushy ledge is High Desert Solitaire. It has an obvious bolt off the ground that marks the route, and it is a thin 5.9 move into a fun 5.6 right leaning crack that eventually disappears and one more bolt leads you to a two bolt belay (with ring anchors, also a rap station) at a small roof. It is a couple of 5.8 moves to get over the roof. From there head up to a ridge running left to right, up past a bolt and to the summit blocks. There are rap chains at the summit block and it takes two full 35m raps down. In other words, a min 70m rope.

Visions of Empire starts a bit to the left of the second pitch of Dreamliner – look for “Z” flakes. Start with a cam, then its bolts, some natural pro then bolts again to end up at the same roof/belay. 5.7/5.8.

We did these ground up using an unconventional technique of “someone has to be on the ground to watch the dogs”, otherwise the dogs try to climb around and up and on this climb that wouldn’t work. So we drug a second 70M rope and ran it out to the full length (2 pitches) but were still 40 feet shy of the summit. So Betsy untied, climbed up and downclimbed back to the rope to bag the summit.

The Hourglass is easy to find, but I’d do the other climbs first – better rock. Look for the white streak ( you can even see it on one of the photos) and start directly below it. If you can’t see the hourglass back up to a big Juniper tree and it will be obvious.

In following photo the climbs are from the left to right, High Desert Solitaire, Visions of Empire and Dreamliner. .

The first few photos are full res so you can click and explore.