The Fortress 

Instructions for getting off the Fortress:

After topping out, head north into flat and vegetated area. Locate gully between the West Pillar where most of the routes top out and the East Pillar. From the top of the West Pillar, the climbing up onto the East Pillar (where you can walk down from) looks substantially harder than it actually is when you're looking up at it from within the gully.

To get into the gully, downclimb into it by going back south, then east, then north again into the cleft. Head north into the gully about 2/3 of the way until you see a riblike formation of rock on your left. Across from the rib you can see the obvious weakness heading up the East Pillar. There's an initial dynamic move, maybe about 5.8, to get established on the slab, then about 20 feet of easy 5th classing to get out (5.2-5.3?)..

After getting your bearings the first time, you can pretty much head diagonally straight from the top-outs to the downclimb into the gully.

PS there's another option about 15 feet further climber's left, which involves a small traverse left then super juggy holds up and out... (avoids the 5.8 move onto the face climber's right on the first option)..haven't done it but I guess most people think it's easier..

I say the Orifice wall should be called Hardbody wall and the its next new route called 'Chesthair Turtleneck.'

I know there was a lot of action up at the Orifice wall last season. Anyone care to list the routes from right to left as you approach the big ledge? A few of the route descriptions don't really give much info as to where each given route is compared to the other routes.

Thanks.

Weather up top is fantastic. Perfect temps on the sunny sides and at the Orifice. Get up there Luis

The routes from right to left:

(First three start along the cable route)

The Brightest Fire 11c
Huck Fin 12
Disfigured Foreigner 12-

(Next three routes are after the cable)

Oedipus Complex 12-
Old red tagged project?
Gettin Off The Porch 12-

(The remaining routes all start down the stepped slab, on the lower tier)

Coup de'tat 13-/Orifice Politics 12c
Project?
Hard Day At The Orifice 12b
Eureka 13-

Anyone know what route this is? I thought we were on either Twice As Nice or Fisherman's Elbow but neither description matches. Perhaps it is "Nice BBDs" with a third pitch added? The location seems about right anyway.

Descending the west side of the Fortress one encounters two bolted lines. The rightmost of the routes consists of three pitches:

1) The first pitch ascends bright white rock for 80ft until a ledge with anchors is reached. The climbing is ~5.9.

2) The second pitch climbs bulgy, black and green rock. This rock is reminiscent of the rock on the Orifice Wall. The anchors for this pitch are immediately below a ledge. Scars in the rock show that they had been moved a foot or two lower at some point. I am tempted to say the route ended here at one time. The climbing is ~5.10 and 80ft or so.

3) The third pitch crosses two ledges and is significantly easier than the first two pitches. The rock is standard Fortress rock with plenty of good holds. The climbing is ~5.8 and 100ft or so.

Someone has scattered rat poison around the base of The Orifice, presumably to kill the mice that occasionally raid lunches. This is obviously NOT COOL. Whomever did it obviously wasn't thinking about the squirrels, chipmunks, birds, reptiles that eat them, and other people's dogs. We may not like for animals to get into our things, but this is their habitat-- even the mice-- not ours. Not that any rangers would ever know about it, but this would also be a great way to get access to a crag taken away. Everyone there today was on the same page that this is VERY bad form by some fellow climber. Whoever you are, please don't be an embarrassment to our sport or a menace to the environment again.

Ah crap. This mess will need to be cleaned up. Thanks for the info Meghan.

speaking of cleaning up a mess (yeah yeah i know it was last year) can we clean up all these routes into separate categories? e.g. orifice wall, fortress south face, etc. right now it's confusing as all hell.

Jon, PM one of these three administrators: Greg Opland, James DeRoussel, JJ Schlick
I'd say James would be your best bet since he created this page.

I can help with that. If you guys want to create new "areas" within this one, and tell me which routes go where, I can relocate them to your new areas. PM and let me know.

Now that I think about it, it will be more work than I thought. But we just did it for the Winslow Wall, so...

Of course Jon could just start climbing them all and then like those who have climbed most of them he would not be so confused. Gotta spoon feed these kids everything. You know where Steel Crazy starts so work in either direction from there. It isn't that hard. Better yet ask someone to color code the hangers. Better yet we should chop 3 routes after the first one on the right then 3 more after route 5 and so on. Less routes means less confusion. No No never mind, Think of it as a puzzle Jon or a video game where you actually have to play with your body to win.

WHAT WOULD DON BULAND SAY ABOUT THIS JON? Haha!

If only someone would do a guidebook. Oh wait someone is working on one.

Okay now go back to the first paragraph.

JJ, the obvious answer here is to promote Rhicard to administrator status and let him organize the entire mountain. (seriously)

Hey Steve, I actually proposed the idea of "guest admin" privileges to Andy not so long ago for cases as such. I'll look into it, but Richard would probably need some stronger coffee for such a task...

+1 for Eric fixing the area up.

Isn't Eric already organizing the entire mountain?

Just chiming in here because I'd love to see some organization for this area as well. I was up there yesterday for the first time, and between this site and Squeezing The Lemmon II there was essentially no useful information for The Fortress. We found some cool climbs (a bunch of nice vertical sport climbs at the base of the Right Fortress) but I have no idea what they were.

Putting "dead tree" on a topo is f'ing useless if I can see 15 dead trees from any given place at the base of a wall.

Peter,

The guidebook was printed in 1997. In 2003 there was a huge fire that killed a bunch of trees. I think this area was part of what was burned, hence the multitude of dead trees.

I agree it would be nice if this area were subdivided and reorganized, though. Edit: reorganized on MP, that is.

Interesting. First time I went down to the Fortress with STL II I had no trouble figuring out what was what. Sometimes I did actually have to match features on the topo with the actual rock in front of me.
It does seem the ability to read a guide book has diminished in the last ten years. Not sure why that is. Maybe too much info being spoon fed to the masses has decreased the ability and desire to figure stuff out your self.