Be gentle on me, acid tongued super topo people, it's my first trip report and the real subject is the brain changing effects of aging, so...
Here's me and Hellroaring in the parking lot on our way up to Cosmic Wall:
We are trying to remember where the hell we are and why we are here-then we looked in the back of the car and saw this crap:
Then it came to us-we were on our way to Castle Crags, a pleasant, little-climbed area southwest of Shasta, north of the Trinity Divide. We thought we'd be going to Toulumne to climb Matthes Crest but were shut out by the weather-so instead we were cruising north on the 5, drinking coffee and having a few laughs.
We got to the trailhead around 4 and started hiking up the trail til we saw this-our objective:The route goes up the sunny face to mid height, then follows the shaded corner to the notch on the left, and then along the summit ridge to the top.
We lazed along and made it to the saddle below Cosmic Wall around sunset. It was a great night, just sitting around in our sleeping bags eating, drinking and shooting the sh#t.
Awake early we saw this:
We got going and found the base easily-since we've climbed this route almost annually, you'd hope that would be the case but hey we are both pushing 50, with a gap or two in our memories.
Hellroaring cruised the first pitch, climbing past the traditional belay, then backing down to the "right" spot.
Here he is coming up on the second pitch:
Hopefully you can see the granite is clean and very compact, with few real cracks and no jamming to speak of-there are more overlaps and pockets, etc. We took about 12 pieces of gear, 6 small nuts and 6 cams to #2, and used maybe 1/2 of them. We placed maybe 3 or 4 pieces on each pitch. the climbing is fun, easy and very positive, with exception of one 5.7 move on a steep slab. Sorry, no pictures.
We made great time to the biggest belay ledge, below the 2d to last pitch, and i had to take a little snooze:
Hellroaring made killer time up the 2d to last pitch

and then i took over for the last pitch-we did the arete variation and it's great-easy, but looks burly, has unbelievable exposure. At that point we had a snickers bar
and rapped off-another brain fart, we brought a trail line and then remembered oops you can get off with a 60 m rope.

So yeah, it's a great climb-comparable to Cathedral but almost better cause there are no crowds, the bivying is killer and the drive is easy. So yeah, for all you geezers who want some mellow multi pitch climbing Cosmic Wall is perfect.