The following areas are closed to all visitor use to protect peregrine falcon aeries from March 1 until August 1 of each year or until the young falcons of the current year have fledged: Fifi Buttress Immediately west of Leaning Tower. Closure includes all routes on Fifi Buttress.
This information is a public crowdsourcing effort between the Access Fund,
and Mountain Project. You should confirm closures, restrictions, and/or related dates.
So the West Buttress obviously isn't a "base route", but the first two pitches make for excellent cragging if you're in the area for Peter Pan.
There are a couple variations on the first pitch. There is a 5.6 start to the left which hand traverses a juggy diagonal crack up and right.
The 5.9 start is what we did, which starts at almost the same spot as Peter Pan. Climb straight up the flake which varies from fists to fingers. Feels sort of stiff for 5.9, I thought it was harder than the 10a second pitch. Either start you end at a bolted belay off to the right of the crack.
The second pitch is long and spectacular. Climb a low angle 4" crack to a wider crack below a roof. From below this looks impossible but there's some good face holds out left. Stepping over to these is the crux (10a). Then climb up the delecate flake a short ways and move left again to the furthest left crack. (Don't miss this traverse or you'll end up in harder and scarrier terrain). Hand-jam up the awesome crack/flake to the anchor.
From here, make two double-rope rappels to the ground.
I think from here the West Buttress route climbs up to some old bolts and then swings over into the seam to the left which is filled with fixed hardware and bushes. There's also a sweet looking crack going through a bulge over to the right. I'm not sure if there is an anchor above the bulge however.
Protection
Doubles from fingers to 2". A 6" piece protects the crux step left below the roof. The 5.6 start looks like it protects with some 4.5" pieces.
Well worth the walk, but you have to commit to this when you leave the road or else you'll just end up climbing the Sacherer Cracker again.
By Alexey From: San Jose May 1, 2012 rating: 5.10a/b
indeed very hard 5.9 first pitch. I added #3 and #4 to above gear recommendation . Second pitch traverse can be protected by pin, #6 and red alien. But topo is perplexing. From topo in Reid you think that you need to take the first vertical crack after traverse, but in fact you need to do one more traverse to second crack. If you believe topo and continue first crack as I did - you will find climbing harder and harder and find this crack almost diminishing and no bolts in the end. At this point you can not traverse free to left crack which has bolts in the end. But pendulum works. My 80 m rope was not work for rappel on p2- it is about 45 m long.
When I did this climb in 2002 where you are supposed to cut left on the 2nd pitch I went right. I think there was at least one bolt that sucked me off route. Anyways - it got pretty hard and I took a nice fall onto a tiny nut that held. Not paying enough attention to the topo. Came back and finished the pitch after the bad memories faded two years later.
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