My friend leading Turkey's Delight, the chimney to...
Description
The route starts off great. The first pitch would get two stars. There's a small boulder sticking out at the top of the first pitch with slings around it (bring your own double sling). Best advise is to rap from here. Second and third pitch continue up and to the right of the belay. The descent off the back is really odd, especially if you haven't been up top of Turkey Tail before. It's best done by going to the right from the top and finding spots to hop down between rocks. -Tyler Jones
If you move left to a small alcove at the top of the first pitch, you will find two bolts with some funky (yet solid) wire contraption and a couple of slings. Rap straight down the face past the overhang from here. Also, you can do an interesting variation on the last 20 feet by taking a vertical finger crack on the left wall of the dihedral directly to the alcove. Felt 9+ to me, but I was on TR.
Great route! Awesome hand jams with some funky moves along the way. To find this climb from the base of the Perch, boulder hop around to the south face of the obvious Turkey Tail formation. You can find a faint trail once out of all the boulders. Look for a right facing dihedral with double cracks. The crack on the left is wider and is a short squeeze chimney at the bottom. Also, look for a bolted line up a beautiful 5.hard arete which finishes into a crack. Turkey's Delight is about 30 feet to the left of the arete. Enjoy!
An adventurous variation second pitch climbs straight above the belay at 5.8. This is called the Dark Meat variation, i think. Classic chimney technique, with protectable crack in the back. Pull over the roof (take care not to run the rope in the crack, would get stuck?)on hand jams and up the OW (crux). A 4 -4.5 Camalot would have been nice for this bit. Belay at a sloping ramp. Squirt through a hole/chimney to descend the backside. This way sucked, as it required some downclimbing in the snow.
By Jerry Cagle From: Tucson, AZ Jul 4, 2006 rating: 5.7
I belayed P1 at an unusual cave-like hole a little to the right of the crack proper, and a fair distance above and R of the "anchor". From there I spiraled L through a "slot canyon-ish" affair then back directly above the belay, past a moderately difficult lie-back to an easy slab/jam fest to just below the top. Scrambled up about another 20 feet to top out. Yes, this created a fair amount of rope drag toward the top, but the climbing was easy and straightforward.
For the descent, the guide we used showed an arrow pointing to the West and "Chimney". We found the chimney, but it appeared a bit harder than we liked, and we didn't see any apparent descent from the bottom of it, so we set up two raps off the back (North) side. If you're on top and in the mood for a treasure hunt there's some booty (stopper, hex, some biners) up there. Someone please clean up my mess! Let me know if you find it...
Turkey Tail
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