North Six Shooter Peak Rock Climbing

Compared to the view from the top of North Six Shooter, the top of Castleton Tower might as well be buried under Lake Powell. Okay, I exaggerate--a bit. Still, this may be the most amazing summit I have ever tagged. The climbing ain't bad either.

North Six Shooter is the northwesterly of two spectacular towers (the other being South Six Shooter) that come into view on the left when Indian Creek Canyon opens up, past all the established cragging. It sits atop a massive talus cone and the east face offers one of the very best tower routes, the famous Lightning Bolt Cracks. A series of subsidary summits reach to the south. I don't know whether they have been climbed, but the southernmost summits in particular have some beautiful crack lines.

Lightning Bolt Cracks has cracks of every size with comparatively only a little offwidth. All the other routes follow crack systems that appear to have an inordinate amount of offwidth climbing. Liquid Sky, in particular, is an infamous body size dependent squeeze chimney through a roof, that parallels the roof pitch of Lightning Bolt Cracks. The first ascent was made in the early '60s by way of the chimney between the main tower and the next summit. From the notch, it finished up a decrepit bolt ladder.

To descend, rappel south from the summit into the aforementioned chimney/notch (check out the bolt ladder). Then, rappel from three somewhat dubious bolts down the *west* side of the formation to the ground.