Dancing in the Moonlight

Approach: Drive 1 mile past Avocado Gully and park on the right side of the road at an open field just before an obvious memorial. Hopefully you’ll have a trail to follow up towards the main gully. Bushwack through the scrub oak, trending left until you hit an obvious creek bed. Walk up the dry drainage until you come to an easy rock band. Climb through this on the right, then up to the next major cliff in the gully, there may be a thin pitch here. Climb it, or head up the loose gully on the right. (Depending where you cut back left, you may encounter 5.7 dirt climbing. Enjoy). Get back in the gully and/or keep going. Just when you think there is no way there is ice up here, look for the obvious first pitch coming down from the left. Expect an hour or so on the approach.

Description: Climb a nice long flow of mellow ice. Above this, follow the stream bed to a series of 2 short but steep ice pillars and then up to a large, red amphitheater. Climb the obvious ice pitch in the corner to a ledge and then up the short pillar above. Belay at a tree on the left (slings). Above this the terrain mellows somewhat, but you can climb more ice for several hundred more feet if you want and its not covered in snow.

Gear: Ice screws.

Descent: The rap from the last big pitch is over 100′, but you can do a short rap from a tree to a v-thread, then from there to the ground. Walk back down the gulley, rap the steep pillar from tree on the right. Then walk down to the last rap, which is over 100′. Connect trees to get down to the ground. You might want to take slings and rings to back up whats there.