Ethan and Bob got up before dawn to climb Space Boys.
Roger and I decided to climb the first 4 out of 12 pitches of "Estrellita" on the "Las Estrellas" wall. The first 4 pitches are on the Las Estrellas side of the canyon. After that, you have to commit to climb to the summit and rappel off the other side of the fin, into Los Lobos canyon. Neither of us felt that sure we wanted to lead the 5.10b pitches near the summit, so we decided to do just the first 4 pitches. Tami's guidebook describes the route like this:
Estrellita, 12 pitches plus variations (5.9, 5.9, 5.9 (5.11b), 5.11a (5.8), 3rd class, 5.7, 5.7, 5.10b, 5.9+, 5.10b, 5.10b, 5.8) Fun climbing to a beautiful summit and a spectacular rappel into Los Lobos Canyon. You need 1 60 meter rope, 12 quickdraws and a pair of comfortable shoes for the walk-off. Beta: pitch 3; pit bull variation, go straight up then right across the dog walk. pitch 4; avoid 5.11 by traversing left across the dog walk then up cracks and ramp. ... NOTICE: Do not climb past the 5th pitch unless you are committed to going to the summit. Rapping the upper pitches will endanger those climbing in Las Estrellas below!!!
Some French-speaking climbers came up to us while we were about to start. Since I only know a few words in French and we both knew a little more Spanish, we tried to communicate in Spanish. It was pretty pathetic, but we got the point across to them that if they wanted to do the whole 12 pitches of "Estrellita", they could get around us by starting on the Mojo Slab in the El Fin De Semana and climb "UFOs, Big Rigs and Burriotos" (5.9, 5.7) to meet up with "Estrellita" at pitch 5, the 3rd class Aztec Lounge.
I take the first pitch of "Estrellita" and then Roger and I swing leads. The first two pitches are OK 5.9 climbing, nothing to write home about. The 3rd pitch has an 5.11b variation that goes striaght up, which we skipped. Instead we climbed to the right up an easy ramp (5.9 in the book, but easier to us). Pitch 4 is 5.11a, but we took the easier 5.8 variation, called "the dog walk". Roger led this strange pitch which starts off traversing down left to a ledge (it's a walk, but clip the bolts to protect the second), then climbs up a steep wall (great photo op!) to a small ledge with a big overhanging crack above you. It looks pretty scarey and difficult for an easy 5.8 variation...then you realize you can just keep going to your left around the corner, then scramble up an easy ramp to the top.
The top of pitch 4 takes you to a class 3 section called the Aztec Lounge. You can see that the rest of the climb follows up ramps from the Lounge and gradually gets steeper at the summit. This is where we quit and rappelled back down the way we came up.
We took breaks to look across the canyon to see how Bob and Ethan were doing on "Space Boyz". It was very hard to see them, they were only specs on that huge expanse of rock. What's amazing is that it's 11 pitches, seems huge from the ground, but then when you look at a profile of Potrero Chico, it's just the first little spire on the side of the cliff, only 1/4 of the way up!
After we got down from "Estrellita", Roger and I headed over to the Virgin Wall. This is a beautiful little canyon with a shrine built in a grotto. There's a statue of the Virgin Mary, and the whole shrine area has tile decorated walls. There are well made steps winding up into the canyon. The canyon itself has beautiful steep walls with clean rock on the left side. The right side has very steep and overhanging walls leading to the top of a very thin fin.
Virgin Canyon routes we did:
On our way to Checo's for dinner, we met Ethan and Bob, beaming from their successful climb of "Space Boyz". Ethan wrote up a separate "Space Boyz" trip report with all the details.