Stepping away from the belay on pitch 2. Very inte...
Description
This is my favorite desert tower route. Now all free, with a well-protected crux, much Eldorado Canyon-style face climbing on fine rock, cheek-clenching exposure (or is it fine exposure and cheek-clenching rock?), and a classic flat summit. The regular route (the only other route, on the south side, has aid and is likely unrepeated) is a true desert classic, combining a sense of history and exploration with technical high quality pitches.Start on the northeast corner, under a big clean dihedral.
1. Scramble over some blocks then jam and stem up the dihedral to the roof. Great gear. This is about 5.9/5.10-. Then awkwardly lurch rightwards under the roof, a tad harder, to a blind reach for, well, whatever you can grab out on the face. Launch up a short steep wide section (5.10b/c) to easier ground, where the impacts of so many groping hands and feet, over the years, have removed all traces of the traditional kitty-litter.Saunter up to a tiny exposed ledge and fixed anchor. Double ropes help protect this pitch.
2. Comb your hair and brush your teeth for the photo-op traverse. After this rightwards stroll, launch up a blocky and sustained right-facing system. Again, two ropes and liberal use of slings here is a good idea on this long pitch. There are several moderate 5.10 boulder problem moves between rests, then the crack angles up and left past a steep weird section, then passes a relic of an old fixed anchor. A belay here is possible, but will be hanging and awkward. Best to boldly keep going up the slowly steepening terrain above. Angle up and left into a squat dihedral, then exit this up and right. Wires are surprisingly good here, though be careful to use adequate slings as the placements are often hidden in recesses and funny horizontals. A final funky bulge onto a great ledge completes one of the better trad 5.10 pitches anywhere.
3. The Token Sport Pitch. This has a short but burly overhead-bolt protected 5.11c crux, just above a nice rest ledge. Actually this is hardly a sport pitch; there is a very funky move off the belay to get onto the rest ledge. Once above the crux, more steep 5.10 Eldo-style face climbing with wires for gear gains a crappy old bolt and a mantel onto an elephants-ear flake. If the elephant is in a kind mood, which it usually is, the flake will stay put, and you can belly-scrape up onto the next belay ledge. However this elephant appears to have some form of leprosy, and one day the ear will detach itself. In fact one day the crucial hold at the 5.11c crux will also go south (or north in this case) and this pitch will be rather harder. Once on the ledge, you can relax, all the hard climbing is over with, and while your partner leads the 5.8 glory pitch up and right to the easy finish, you can lean over the void below and envisage the scene should the whole tower topple. If it did, it would fall south, and the climbers would be left with a few seconds of quiet contemplation and a whistle of the wind, before the end. Maybe, just before the tower hit the ground, if you jumped up with enough force, you could actually land unhurt on the debris.
Wow, wait a minute, the ropes are suddenly tugging, and off you go easily up the last pitch. Or if your partner is Jonny Copp, he'll not be satisfied with the regular finish, and you'll find yourself struggling up the direct finish. Hmmm. This wasn't in the script. Hideously awkward mantels and steep face, very solid 5.11, lead straight up to the nice new rap bolts. The summit is a very cool place to be, where the silence is loud, and everything else is very small. There is still a register under the cairn, though the sequence of ascents is pretty hard to figure out anymore due to the assortment of broken pencils, torn candy-bar wrappers and oddments with odd scrawls. Bring more paper!
For me, it appears I am competing with one Jimmy Dunn, who has also been up here four times. The rate of ascents is interesting. Maybe ten or a dozen ascents a year now. One a month. A total of about 100 ascents is my guess. Rap the route. Two 60 meter ropes gain the top of the second pitch. Fron here, rap to the top of the first pitch, then again to the ground. Get ready for the drive from hell; it's a loooong way to the Moab Brewery. Kor and Ingalls may have done the first ascent, but Castleton Tower it ain't.
Protection
'A regular rack of cams from small Aliens to #3.5 Friend (maybe two sets) and wires (include RPs) and quickdraws. Plenty of slings. There is a nice optional placement for a #5 Camalot just over the lip of the roof on pitch one. ',
Did this as an aid route many moons ago (1987). I seem to recall needing mostly small to moderate gear for the first pitch, a wide variety of things for the second pitch (like a couple of big pieces, 4 friend or so), and then a few small pins for the third pitch. Not sure how the new bolt would affect the aid rating for the third pitch. -Brian Hansen
The crux is short. An aid rating for this could perhaps be 5.10, C1, with just a couple of easy aid moves on bolts. There is much 5.9+/5.10 climbing. It could go at 5.9 C1, but I imagine it would be kinda slow.
Aiding this would be unimaginably tedious--gear buried in the back of bulgy flares, legs thrashing uselessly about... it's a brilliant (and sustained) free route, though. Don't belay unless you're on a nice ledge--beware fakies.
Don't mean to disagree with Crusher (I'm sure he is a true desert pioneer and rat!) but from the top of Standing Rock you can rap with two 60 meter ropes to the top of the first pitch, (not second) and then one more rap to the ground. Great route but if this rock was not on such a unique tower I wouldn't touch it!
The best approach for this route is the gully to the northeast. Not the epic walk through space and time to the southeast. When I did it there was a very convenient rope ladder there. The approach from the white rim probably took only 1/2 an hour to 45 minutes. The crux of course is finding the right gully. There was a pretty big cairn there when I did the route which made it easy.The route itself was great!! The first pitch felt about 10a/b. Long slings or double ropes mandatory to eliminate rope drag. The second pitch is an endurance crux and the third a boulder problem I didn't free but A0'd without any difficulty. So good!!!!
Additional approach beta: the gully is definitely the way to go. Note also that it is to the NW, and not NE of the tower. Walk to the rim and poke around a bit and you'll find the anchor and a somewhat useless fixed rope in a chimney leading down a 20 foot step in the caprock. You are aiming for a decent gully with a house-sized boulder in it. Jumars and your own rope to fix aren't mandatory, but they certainly are nice since the fixed rope is knotted with small loops for clipping daisies, and isn't easily rappelled or ascended.
As for the route, I emphasize that double-rope technique is crucial for the 2nd pitch. Also, the crux hold and "elephant ear" on the 3rd pitch are not long for this world. IMHO, if someone were to replace with a modern bolt, the ancient star-drive bolt "protecting" the mantle onto the elephant ear, they would be doing a great service. The move isn't difficult, but that whole feature is going to snap on someone someday, and the gear just below this is marginal. The 3rd and 4th pitches are easily linked if you don't mind ropedrag on the loose, but easy, finish. I would recommend this given the grim anchor options at the top of pitch 3. Be careful of getting suckered by chalk onto the direct finish, I started this way and found myself faced with a mantle utilizing Russian-roulette flakes over questionable gear.
Oops! Sorry about the northeast, northwest mix-up. Hope nobody is lost out there and dying of thirst and hunger because of my bad beta! Thanks for clearing that up for me Joe!
For the overall experience, this is quiet possibly the best desert tower. I found Crusher's description of the route to be spot on, though he does understate the intensity of the climb. Although it is only 300 feet, it is definitely a grade III. I thought the first pitch was certainly solid 5.10 and the second pitch is very sustained and steep. The third pitch isn't really that bad. It's short and the crux is only a boulder move. The flake at the crux move, however, is definitely going to break on someone, probably soon. Yarding on the elephant ear flake isn't hard but it is griping when the flake flexes a quarter inch as you pull up onto it.
One last note. The mission isn't over until you are back in Moab. The drive back is long (over five hours). Happy trails!
By toddgordon From: Joshua Tree, California May 12, 2007
I was afraid of "the Kitty litter " pitch. It turned out to be a paper tiger. I did this climb with Dave Evans, Margie Floyd, and Cry Fry in 4-88. We had a blast. This climb was a great day for us, and a big deal, for we had dreamed about this climb, and to finally climb this tower was a dream come true. We were afraid of a climb that scared Layton Kor, but with modern cams and such, it wasn't too bad at all.
Yup, the crux hold snapped off about 3 or 4 years ago, but you can still free the route past it on the small holds that are left at a touch harder grade. I think the bolts are all good on that pitch now, but it has been a few years so I can't remember, but I wasn't scared to fall! One of the best desert towers, with a long bumpy approach, 3 hours each way of driving from Moab.
Standing Rock
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