Crawford Needle near Black Canyon

Every time I drive to the north rim of the Black, I look over at the Crawford Needle and wonder...

Is there any climbing on it? Its got a real nice face, but I don't know if the rock quality is good. Anybody know anything about it?

Took a walk up on a rest day last year, there's definitely climbing on it, saw some fixed gear (can't remember now whether we saw any bolts) and picked up a booty nut from the car park.
Rock doesn't look like great quality, but climbable.
It's a good rest day excursion from the Black to just go and take a look.

Yeah, I can't believe Achey or any of the Glenwood guys (or Gunny for that matter) haven't put routes up it.

I wonder if it would clean up with a little lovin'. So there's no access issues?

"The Crawford Tower aint no WALK-UP!"

-unknown old-geezer who offered this bit of fact upon hearing an inquiry as to whether there are any routes on it.

Theres a route on the backside I've heard called the Cowboy Route which is supposed to be moderate climbing with somewhat sketchy rock with a bolt and a few other fixed pieces. Ive heard that some gunni folks have climbed a hard aid route up it some where but thats just here say. Cool looking formation though.

is this also known as the curecanti needle? if so, i have done a great 5.9 up the back side. I'll see if i can get any pics loaded of it.

I did this this june, which was apparently illegal because of peregrine falcon nesting, though not posted at all (its open now). now the rangers have my name birthday and phone number. Dunno if this is what you were thinking of but pm me if you want more specifics.

Nope Kellen, this is not Currecanti Needle they're talking about. This is down by Crawford, you can see it easily on the way to the North Rim Campground of the Black. Joe Cocker's house used to be right at the base of that thing. I remember Jimmy Newberry talking about a route on it, maybe Phil Broscovak knows.

Here's what they're talking about

Hmmmm, couldn't get a picture to post using text formatting features

Chuck Grossman once tried to talk me into climbing it up some legendary Kor route. I declined as I had finals for my degree in Colorado Springs. I think he found some other oblivious fool to partner with. I know this much, the rock is legendary for it's crap quality. I suspect Jimmy Newberry, if asked, could fill us all in on this great feature.

As said before, the rock is pretty poor, however there are at least two routes on it that I know of and have done. Both are around the 5.9 range. Not really worth a trip if this is your only objective, but if you happen to be in the area and have nothing better to do, go for it. Once on top, look around and see if you can find the small cairn with the summit register I put there in 1982...

The "aint no walk up" Crawford Needle is an entirely different beast than the Currecanti Needle.

When I was involved and informed there were 2 and 4/5ths routes on the needle. There might be more now but the rock quality is thoroughly dubious (at best) and that would put off most travelers. It is after all a compelling pile of choss. A friable volcanic plug barfed out of the underworld eons ago. But it does have a summit. There is an OLD route on the (north) backside that breaches the shortest section of wall through jumbled corner-ish system. Bob Dickerson did it ages ago and reported seriously loose 5.8 climbing. Bill Forrest has a route up the western flank that goes at something like 5.9 or 5.10 A3 and is considered dangerous. Grossman and I went up there 'cause we couldn't stand looking but not touching anymore. It was Chuck who, in is eminently enthusiastic way, went trotting up to the rocking chair geezers at the Crawford General Store to ask about climbing the needle. The geezers stopped their rhythmic rocking and stared spit toothed and steely eyed at Chuck. Finally and with finality the one who seemed to be in charge simply said "Aint no walk up the Crawford Needle!". I can still hear him drawl it out in pronouncement. That was all he said before re-kick starting the rocker races with his cronies. But I think he was thinking that we boys best not muss up his checkers game with some blame fool rescue or there would be hell to pay. I think he was in charge. Well that didn't dissuade Chuck and I from gambling and gamboling our way up several pitches of the diciest, sketchiest and chossiest of stone and stone like material. From the ugly ground fall potential of the first pitch we entered into a deepening mire of commitment. Each pitch was irreversible, each belay uninspiring. Cruxin out at what seemed to be 5.11 r/x on overhanging and bulgy rotten huecos filled with grit we came to a marginal stance in a crumbly chimney like groove. Unfortunately we had gotten a late start, what with jawin' with the neighbors and there being no trails or approach beta and all. So as it ended up we stopped when darkness threatened to overtake us. We were a half a pitch of desperate climbing from the long summit ridge when I insisted we go down. I didn't relish the prospects for a unknown descent in the dark. Please don't ask about the rap anchors. I still shudder when I think about them.

Alan be glad you weren't a fool and stayed in school.

Hey MossMan try saving the pic in your profile then using the MP img code# to post it into a thread.

Wow, great photo!! See, thats why I started this thread- that face looks sick! But I guess everything looks perfect from far away...

Absolutely wonderful picture! Thanx for posting it up.

Here's Jeremy's account of our climb in early July of '07...

Needle Rock - C, 7874’
Crawford Quad
Delta County

North Face, 5.7, 1 pitch, 130’. 70’ scramble to finish.

This TR will be a TR first, and then a historical guide when I obtain more info. Aaron Ihinger, my dad, and I have been looking at Needle Rock for years, and I’ve become more and more determined to get up it. Finally the weather arrived which seemed conducive to a climb, and I had previously inspected what I would later learn was called the North Face route, one of 3 listed in the summit register. Before I go any further, let me express my thanks to Aaron for leading the pitch and climbing well. Without his lead, I’m confident I wouldn’t have summited. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Aaron yet, he’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. The kind of person who makes you look good just by having him around. My deepest thanks, Aaron.

From Crawford, you can see the volcanic plug of Needle Rock (think Lizard Head) sticking up out of the ground with its almost 700’ of prominence. When you get closer to it driving east, it dominates your view, as your eyes are drawn to its severe and overhanging SW face. This SW face hosts a route listed as the SW Arete, once as 5.11 or 5.12 5 pitches and once as 4 pitches. Regardless, it is an intimidating face, and I’m not sure I’d be up for climbing it, even assuming I could climb 5.11, which I cannot. There is a distinct crack on the left hand side of this route, which I suspect is the main line going up it. To the right of the crack are several hundred large huecos, ascending most of the way up the face. According to the summit register, the first ascent of Needle Rock and the majority of the following ascents went up the “NE Gully” or “Brady Gulch”, which is a steep, bush-choked gully that supposedly goes at 5.2R. I suspect it is also filled with dinnerware.

As you drive past Needle Rock, you get an up-close view of the rotten nature of the basalt, and it looks less and less likely that it will go. There is a small TH with a few picnic benches and an informative sign showing the geology of Needle Rock to the east of the plug itself. There is a small single track that switchbacks steeply up the east then northeast and finally north sides of the rock which provides a good view all the way around the peak. We donned our packs and gear and headed up. After about 550’ of gain and .75 miles, we bushwacked from the trail south to the talus and then the ridiculously steep scree/dirt approach up to the base of the rock. This was the first time I’ve actually set my hands on the rock itself, and I was a bit intimidated. A beautiful line up horizontal hexagonal basalt columns exists to your left, but it is impossibly thin for pro (maybe some knife blade pitons?). Then there is a shattered face which looks more akin to dragon scales than!
rock (not climbable), followed by a left-overhanging soft dihedral, a bulge, and a soft arête before the approach area drops away dramatically towards the west. We didn’t see any lines available past ½ way across this north face, but Aaron thinks there might be a route up the NW arête; if there is, it would put you on top of the incredibly thin ridge (think Eolus’ sidewalk, but shattered loose dinner plates instead of solid, flat rock), which you would have to traverse over to the true summit. No thanks. We decided that the most obvious line (the soft arête) might go, so we roped up on Aaron’s half ropes. Aaron, fresh off some harder trad leads (5.8+) was thankfully willing to lead, and I set up a belay anchor while my dad cleared the area.

The first 30’ or so are easy and mostly solid 5.2R, with highly questionable blocks everywhere. Aaron was able to find a marginal placement with a #.5 cam at about this point in a downward facing crack. From here, he spied a piton with some white cord on it high above and proceeded to make his way up toward it, again surprised to find a drilled bolt and hanger along the way. He clipped into the bolt and feeling comfortable for the first time on lead, pushed on for the laterally bent knife blade piton 8' above. Thinking he was on the line (since obviously someone had been here before) he kept pushing the route upward, following a soft notch on the left hand side of the arête. This was where things began to get spicy. Originally, looking from below, we had discussed traversing left into the soft dihedral at this point and going up a gully from there. When Aaron saw the piton above, he (as I would have) figured the route must go up, so up he went. He got into a tight spot, standing on sloping lichen covered rocks, not able to get any gear in and struggling to go any higher. At this point, he was about 12’ above the (bent) piton. My dad and I suggested from below that maybe he should try and downclimb in order to try the traverse to the left from the vicinity of the bolt, so Aaron slowly began downclimbing, always the scariest part of climbing (IMHO). I thought I spied another bolt across the traverse as Aaron was coming down and my Dad stepped around me to get to his glasses and see if he could spy the supposed bolt but then... “UGH!!!!” I flew forward as Aaron popped off the rock, so quickly and unexpectedly that he didn’t even have a chance to yell “FALLING”. I only just saw him peel off as I was taking up the rope as he downclimbed. This was the first time I’ve arrested a leader fall, and it was Aaron’s first leader fall, all of this taking place on questionable pro on rotten rock. Fortunately, I had a belay anchor, I was managing the rope correctly, the piton held, and when Aaron fell somewhere north of 15’, hitting face first into the rock, scraping his cheek and wobbling a couple of molars, he didn’t hit anything excessively sharp, despite the fact that the vast majority of the basalt fractures incredibly sharply. He also received a few consolation scratches on his elbows and hands for his troubles.

Unnerved and more than a bit scared, my dad and I talked to Aaron, who was remarkably unfazed. He decided that instead of coming down (which is what I probably would have done), he was most assuredly going to get up it now. After collecting his wits about himself, he set off across the traverse (I think the technically hardest part of the climb, 5.7), which ended up being the right line after all, and then the angle relented a bit and the climb eased in difficulty a bit, dropping to the 5.5 range. Unfortunately, as the grade relented, it became shallow enough that it could hold debris. Aaron moved up and as he went for a handhold, the rock, somewhere around 50lbs+, came completely loose in his hands. He grabbed it and pushed it up and out of the way where it was stable enough and safe, but all the loose rock underneath gave way and came down. He gave out a “ROCK!!”, and my dad and I ducked as best we were able to avoid the rockfall. The majority of the debris came down the other arête, but a few small rocks came down around my dad and I. (In case you don’t remember my Dicker’s Peck TR, my dad and I haven’t had the best of luck around rock fall. He took a big one on the shoulders/upper back last June, and another friend of mine took a couple big rocks to the wrist and thigh.) Needless to say, dad jumped way clear as fast as he could. I moved as much as I could while tied into the belay anchor, which wasn’t much.

Past that fun part, Aaron pushed the route to within sight of the summit disaster. He briefly considered going to the summit while on lead, but figured seeing an easy ascent route and a place to build an anchor, decided to stop where he was. It was about a 130’ pitch. He built the anchor, and then I followed up. My dad was tied into the second rope, but wasn’t sure he was going to climb. After I got to the bolt, I was sure he wouldn’t be at all comfortable, and I was worried about communication issues with him from above (I had a hard time communicating with Aaron already, and my dad is a bit hard of hearing). Not wanting more of an epic, dad untied and ducked around the corner to safety. I continued on, unclipping both ropes and removing the gear Aaron had placed. This put me in a bad spot – I had to upclimb to his highest anchor, the bent piton, but my rope was snagged on a large (500lb+), loose sharp rock that was pulling me to my left. So as I went up, the rope I was trying to free was whacking one end of the death boulder 8’ above my head, and my rope was slowly prying the other end loose. I about crapped my pants. I couldn’t reach high enough to push the boulder away from me if it came loose, Aaron couldn’t hear me, and now I had to weight the rope because I had climbed past my holds and was in the area of Aaron’s fall. Great! I was concerned that when I weighted the rope to get to the traverse, it would finish prying off the death boulder and it would be daggers for me. Freaked out, I slowly weighted the rope and completed the traverse as quickly as I could, getting into the easier, albeit still terrifyingly loose garbage rock around the left corner. I continued up, and was grateful to see Aaron at the belay. Happily, he had constructed a bomber (as it could be on this rock) anchor, and I stayed on belay while I scoped out another bolt below us that still had a bunch of webbing on it, trying to determine if it was our rap station or the end of a route. We never really figured out which it was, because while I was spotting that, Aaron spotted our savior – a double bolted bomber rap anchor, one of the best I’ve ever seen, even if the angle of the chains was a little greater than perfect.

I unroped, scrambled east and down to the saddle with the NE “pinnacle”, and then back up and SW around 70’ vertically to the summit “block”. I was surprised to see a register, and took photos of all the references inside, and will fill in more detail later. I scampered over to the SW point (20’ away), and looked down as close as I dared over the shattered summit block down the huge overhanging south face. Scary. I went back to the summit, and was grateful I didn’t have to climb the NE pinnacle – more giant, fractured garbage awaited there, although someone had done it, because a cairn sits on top. I waited for Aaron while he broke down the anchor and wound ropes, and then he made his way up for our photos. We enjoyed our aerie rest for a few minutes, and then I scrambled down to pick up the ropes and rig our rappel. Aaron followed shortly, and we expressed our gratitude to whomever had set the rap station. We threw the ropes down and I was grateful to see my dad below me, safe and awaiting our descent. I rigged a prusik, checked my knots again, and rapped down the dragon’s back to meet up with my dad. Fortunately, no blocks came loose. Aaron followed shortly, and we pulled the ropes uneventfully. When measured against rope length, the rappel is about 110’, so you would need a 70M rope for a single rope rappel, or a 60M rope might stretch enough when weighted to reach the ground, although you’d better hold on when you release your rappel and don’t whip your rope back up the face. We celebrated at the bottom, grateful to be safe and (mostly) sound, and took off our climbing gear, flaked the ropes, packed up, and hiked out. I’m not sure I’ll ever do Needle Rock again, but I can’t count it out. I still want to get my dad up it, just maybe not that route (North face). That was one big little checkmark on my list.

I climbed it at the end of this September. I'm working on a climbing project and it was on my list (along with about 50 other 5th class peaks, e.g. Lizard Head, etc.) Here is an excerpt from the trip report I posted on another website:

"I will refer you to Jeremy Hakes' excellent report about the nature of this spire. Having finally climbed Lizard Head last month, I joked to my buddy that Lizard Head is as solid as Yosemite granite compared to Needle Rock, and only marginally harder in one well protected section. Needle Rock is pretty loose, downright scary in spots. The "dragon scales" Jeremy describes can also be described as looking up at the wrong end of a Guillotine...I feel compelled to warn off new leaders who are competent only on solid stuff. Hold/crack/rock evaluation is critical, and the reliable pro opportunites are very sparse. One solid bolt waaay up there (hard to find), then a pretty easy traverse to the left, just be very careful on the holds you use. Scamper on up, a piton in a crack (NOT the bent piton from Jeremy's report), then at a blocky ledge another contour left (NOT into the alcove with tat...I made that mistake and the exit looked 5.9-ish on licheny rock). Once there you're very near the col, which is helpfully stacked with thin death flakes to shower on anyone below. The summit register was soaked & decayed, so we just wrote our initials on a stick and dropped it into the register. Finally the descent: Imagine my delight when it dawned on me that Jeremy and Aaron had used twin ropes. Our single looked a bit short, so we rigged an alternate rap station with a solid single bolt and a backup nut...The rap was relatively uneventful, only one death flake dislodged (which almost bombed my pack), and the rope pulled cleanly. Oy, Needle Rock forced me to dig deep into my climbing bag of tricks...which ain't all that deep! Tips: Bring some Screamers (we only had one, wished for a couple) a 70m rope (for the standard rap station, we only had a 60m), several runners to decrease rope drag, and esp small to mid sized TCU's; IMO they excel in marginal/thin placements.

Climb carefully and you'll be rewarded with a challenging, unique summit spire."

It was a fun adventure climb, but like a martini it's not for everyone. If anyone wants more beta let me know.
-Tom

Mike Morley wrote:From a friend who lives at the base of the Crawford Needle: "I just walked a circle around the rock two hours ago, a good scramble. We live in the talus slope at the base on the south side and I have watched some relatively big rocks come off. Take a close look at the junipers directly at the bottom of the south face and you'll see many limbs freshly exploded. In the last ten years I have seen it climbed only once (up the bubble-route on the southwest). Their biggest problem was thrashing through oakbrush and talus slopes in the dark afterward (we gave them tea to pep them up). Feel free to pass word along. It's crappy rock. Take care, C"