Trad Multipitch Climbing Fingertrip 5.7 at Tahquitz near Idyllwild California with my Dad. Onsight

Trad multi pitch climbing Fingertrip 5.7 at Tahquitz near Idyllwild California with my Dad. This is a classic route that was put up back in 1946 by Chuck Wilts, Don Gillespie and Jerry Rosenblatt. An incredible route from start to finish; with fun moves along every one of its 5 pitches. Fingertrip is located on the right side of the west face of the crag. With pitch 1 starting is a pretty obvious dihedral. The area is well traveled and it’s hard to miss this spot when walking up to it. This climb is listed with 5 pitches but we linked pitch 3 and 4, ending up finishing in 4 pitches. The rock quality on this route is great, and youll see a bit of a polish on the rock due to its popularity. This helps with staying on course, but adds a bit of slippery rock in some sections. There are some loose rocks here and there, as it is a high elevation climb. Always check rock quality before placing gear or cranking on a hold. Few spots with slightly hollow sounding rock. The crux of this climb is probably on the first pitch higher up. You have to make a stemming move to get up a steep section, but it protects nicely. Much like the climb in general. Besides the one slabby move on the second pitch, there really isnt much runout at all on this climb. We ended up accidentally bringing a bit too much gear. But overall a double standard rack up to a number 3 friend, and a set of nuts should be good. It’s nice to have a few triples in the hand and finger size for anchors or linking pitches. We also used a 70 meter rope which is nice for the same reason. As I’ve said, Fingertrip is incredibly fun and if you’re in the area, it’s worth making a trip to hit this climb. Below Is the description from mountain project. MP gives this climb 3.5 out of 4 stars. The climb to lunch ledge at the top of p3 is probably about 400 ft. Then the last two pitches with the scramble to the top are probably close to another 200 ft of easy climbing and scrambling. It's a 5.7 grade, considered the standard for the 5.7 on the yosemite decimal system. As this grading system was developed in Idyllwild. "Description- Fingertrip starts just right of The Slab in a shallow red-stained corner behind a huge pine tree. P1: Climb the corner by liebacking and stemming past a couple ancient fixed pins to where the crack narrows and leads diagonally to the left until it is possible to traverse back right and scramble to a ledge with a large pine tree. Alternately, where the crack leads left one can climb the thin crack directly to the pine tree ledge at 5.8. P2: From the pine tree climb through or around large blocks for about forty feet toward the arch, then traverse left on the face to a small stance and a semi-hanging belay under the prominent arch. P3: Lieback, jam, and face climb to the end of the arch where it is possible to climb over the slight overhang and through a small tree and easy climbing to Lunch Ledge. P4: From Lunch Ledge climb through the blocky orange headwall to scruffy slabs and a move over the bulge to reach a left trending crack and paddling up the 5.4 friction slab past a bolt and the top. Protection Suggest change 1 set of nuts, 1 set of hexes, 1 each TCUs to #2 cam" - Mountain Project. We used a double rack down to a .1 and didnt use any hexes or large nuts and were just fine. We had triples in hand and fingers. Along with a metolius #8 which is between a frind 2 and 3. We also brought a friend 3. In terms of gear for hiking in, the metolius master cams are great. They are very lightweight and have nice in-between sizes. We used those, totems, and some friends mixed in with a few dmm dragonfly cams too. For passive we used wild country lightweight offsets with a few normal rocks mixed in. Along with two of the smaller large rocks. Specifically the 11 and 12 size due to the hex sugestions on MP, but didnt use them. Below is the timestamps for each pitch. Keep in mind we linked p3 and p4. I led pitch 1 along with linking p3/4. My dad led pitch 2 and 5, along with scrambling out an extra 75ish feet to the summit to set up a belay. Pitch 1 5.7 00:00-35:19 Pitch 2 5.6 35:20-1:07:33 Pitch 3 5.7 1:07:34-1:31:25 Pitch 4 5.2 1:31:26-1:48:19 Pitch 5 5.6 1:48:20 Onsight Wednesday October 29th 2025. Started climb at about 11 am. Both topped out on summit around 4pm. Hike up was about 30 minutes with the decent taking closer to an hour, maybe longer. Didnt have sun on us until the top and the weather ended up being perfect.