Justin on the beautiful "Banana Splitter" on the f...
Description
Tippin the Bottle is located on the North face of Bottleneck Peak. 50' right of Woody's roofs, and 20' left of the Langdon Route. It follows a beautiful crack system straight up for three great pitches with a short, chossy 4th-class scramble to the summit.
Pitch 1: Climb a sandy handcrack aiming for splitter roof. Stem out past the wild thin-hands roof crack and pull into the "Banana Splitter" an arching finger-and-hand crack for 30'. Reach another roof and undercling/layback left, up into a crack system and belay below a weird inverted v-slot. Save a couple hand-size cams for this belay and you'll be happy.175' 5.11-
Pitch 2: The BIZZNESS! climb up through the v-slot, strenuous 5.10, then breathe deep and send the overhanging fingers in the corner above. Pass one great rest, into thin hands and a large belay ledge, with a cave just above. I can't say enough good things about this pitch, simply spectacular!!! 100' 5.11++
Pitch 3: Pull a weird thin move into the cave 10+,and figure out the offwidth/fistcrack roof out of it. Follow this crack with hands to a ledge, and climb a huge thin flake 5.8 towards some horrid loose shit. CAREFULLY stem around the loose blocks (5.9), marginal gear below (save a #3 or #4 Camalot for just below this section) and pull on to a large ledge PHEW! 125' 5.11- (note rap anchors here)
Now leave the rack and scramble gingerly up to the cool summit. There is an interesting summit register up there to check out. The raps are fairly straightforward: three double raps down from the top of pitch 3, toward the west, and down the Langdon route.
A great obscure tower route, well done by Pennings and the late Doug Hall.
Protection
There are no fixed anchors or gear on this route so keep that in mind for the rack.bring two sets of cams to 3 inches, and extra fingers, extra thin hands, and one or two 4 inch pieces.two sixty meter ropes to rappel.
for extra "fingers" gear, think tips, I found tcus 1-2 and .3 camalots best for the crux pitch. #4 camalot was used only to protect the 5.8 flake, but #3 camalots seemed to always come in handy. I simply could'nt figure out the moves on the 5.10+ face at the start to pitch 3 and had to pull through that move.
Bottleneck Peak
RSS Feed
