Bear Slabs Rock Climbing

Driving up the Catalina highway at the base of Bear Banyon, a large southwest facing tower with a distinct summit greets you on the left. This blade of chocolate-colored granite offers mellow climbing to an excellent summit with great views of the chessman, agave spires, and windy point areas. The rock is high quality granite typical for mid-mountain (bands of Wilderness and Oracle granite) featuring highly textured plates, knobs, and bulges with discontinuous cracks.

From the Summit Hut Guide: "Across the canyon from Green Slabs are several brown rock masses that, even though they are low angle, dirty, & generally unaesthetic capture the wary climber's fancy and prey upon their curiosity...It is unclear who put up most of the routes but undoubtedly Jon Rupley had a hand in earlier ascents." 

 Attempts were made to contact potential FAs. Bobbi Bensman and Jay Laydin were said to have climbed something on this tower. The old hardware was almost certainly John Rupley and Rich Thompson in the 1970s.  Modern development was started in 2021.

Bolts on new routes were used where natural pro is unavailable and for bomber rap anchors, but traditional protection skills are requisite for safe climbing. This crag has an adventurous approach (no worse than Chessman or the Ruins) and will reward the comfortable intermediate trad leader with some fun climbing. 

The aspect is southwest, climbs get sun at 9:30am in the summer and 11:00am in the winter, sunset views are superb but the hike-out in the dark can be difficult.

**Nota bene  This area was re-developed by me (Matt Sammons) in 2021 and was identified in my personal notes as 'Chocolate Agave', the name taken from the chocolate colored rock and proximity to the agave spires climbs. Initial attempts to find FA info and route information were unsuccessful (likely FA's had either passed, moved out of town, or had not responded to contact attempts). Being a total pain to get to and lacking a critical-mass of high quality hard climbing it seems to have fallen into obscurity, but I enjoyed the moderate trad climbing in a beautiful setting and decided to put efforts into the crag. After refurbishing two routes and establishing a genuine new FA I published here on MP and it was quickly pointed out that this was in-fact Bear Slabs area (not described in SQIII). Area/route info was updated to reflect FA info when available.**