Start up the obvious dihedral on the left side of the south face.
Description
Pitch 1- Climb up broken rock to better rock, stem up corner past 2 drilled pins. Mantle and follow a finger crack to a good belay ledge. There are no anchors on top of pitch 1, Belay takes yellow Aliens (5.11).
Pitch 2- Lieback strenuous thin crack (5.11) to a short OW/Chimney (5.8). Exit the chimney and traverse up and right to a bolted belay.
Pitch 3- This is the business pitch. Climb the corner above the belay past a drilled pin, then traverse right on a ledge, to a poorly protected, crux move(solid 5.11). If you fell you would land on the ledge. Once above the crux, climb 5.7 past 2 pins to the summit.
Descent- Rappel off the Northeast side of the tower. One 200' rappel got us to the ground, but we passed anchors on the way down.
Protection
set of stoppers 1xblack and blue Aliens 2xgreen Alien 5xyellow Alien 3x.5&.75 Camalot 3x1,2,3 Camalot 1xold 3.5 Camalot
I would call this one of the best tower routes I've done. THe climbing is engaging and thought provoking. However, it could be given the R rating in a number of places. If you find the first pitch a bit heady, you might want to bail. It gets more dangerous as you go higher.
We accidently ran the second and third pitches together as I never found the bolted belay mentioned in the description...it's probably my fault as I do this a lot. Anyway, using lots of runners I was able to mitigate the rope drag. I did have to unclip the crux piece at my foot after doing the big move (it's a reach).
The ledge you would hit in the crux is more of a big sloping stance than a square cut ledge. If you jumped out, you might miss it.
The gear list here is perfect, but bring lots of runners.
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