Jeff and I went and climbed a fun route on Devil’s Castle over the weekend. This was my third time up Devil’s Castle in a month, via three different routes. It’s an awesome place with fun adventure climbing. Here’s the pitch beta:

Pitch 1: Mostly 5.6ish, with some 5.8 moves at the last few bolts before the belay on a small ledge. A fun pitch, but nothing spectacular.
Pitch 2: Steep 5.9+ on good, flat edges up nice rock to a sweet, easy, and exposed chimney. Belay is on a good stance above the chimney. My favorite pitch on the route.
Pitch 3: Apparently there are 4 bolts on this pitch, but I only found two. I climbed up to the small tree with rope/slings on it and then left on over to the belay, but I think the bolts are to the left more. Belay on a good ledge. 5.3ish.
Pitch 4: Start out on some fun 5.8+ moves up a dark corner (passing a couple bolts and some pins) to a small ledge on top of the corner. Go right on the ledge to find the next bolt. Climb up the left side of the gully, clipping the bolts on the rocky arete to the left. Belay is on a good ledge with three bolts.
Pitch 5: Climb up to the small tree (I climbed around it to the right, but going around the left of it would result in less rope drag. There’s a small piton with a ring on it right above the tree. Climb up and slightly left  from the tree. 5.7. The belay is on a good ledge right on the ridge.
Pitch 6: The other awesome pitch on the route. Fun 5.8 climbing takes you up the sharp, exposed ridge. Belay at a good ledge with two bolts. As of 9/3/10, there was gray webbing and a quicklink on the bolts. My partner thought that the last pitch was the coolest he had ever done!

I didn’t think any pitches were R or PG-13 rated. The route is very well bolted.

In addition to the dozen draws and half dozen slings, I took half a dozen cams and didn’t use any of them anywhere on the route.

Our Times
9:00 – Left the parking lot
9:45 – Got to base of route
10:00 – Started climbing
11:30 – Halfway (heading up pitch 4)
1:00 – Go to top
1:15 – Left the top
1:50 – Back at packs at base of route
2:30 – Back at car

The route.

Jeff coming up the first pitch.

Taken from near the top of the chimney.

Jeff coming up the chimney.

Jeff enjoying the chimney.

Coming up the gully part on pitch 4.

Jeff on pitch 5.

The last pich.

Jeff on top, with American Fork Twins (tallest mountain in Salt Lake County) in the background on the left.

Being super psyched about Devil’s Castle after doing Black Streak with Thomas, I suggested to Crisco that we go do a route on the face, namely Horns of Satan (III 5.10b/c, 8 pitches, 800′). I’ll just say that the route was fantastic. The third pitch was one of the best pitches I’ve climbed in a while. I think I liked the route as much as Black Streak, maybe a even a little more. The cruxes on Horns of Satan were a bit more sustained and a bit more difficult. Again, it was a beautiful day on a great route. I’ll probably head up there again (for a third time) before the week’s over… On to the pics (as always, click for larger versions):

A topo of the route with my notes on ratings and gear.

Crisco enjoying wildflowers on the approach.

Higher up on the approach.

Looking down from partway up the third pitch. Awesome exposure!

Crisco climbing up pitch 3.

Cool rock and cool crack on pitch 7.

The knife edge summit ridge of Devil's Castle (10,920').

Today Thomas and I did an awesome climb! It’s called Black Streak (III 5.10b, 6 pitches, 800′) on Devil’s Castle (10,920′). It’s mostly a bolted climb, but there are some gear placements in there, too. The approach and getting ready to climb took about an hour. The climb itself took about two and a half hours, and then getting down took about an hour and a half. The pitches are 5.10a, 5.10b, 5.8, 5.4, 5.10a, 5.9.

Overall, I loved the route. I’m going back next week to do another route on the same face. Here are two epic highlights of the trip:

1. Hearing the hum, then buzz of falling rocks. They sound like missiles, and you can’t see them. Then all of a sudden the rock exploded 15 feet away from us… It’s one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever experienced.
2. The road out of Little Cottonwood Canyon is super steep, and I was riding my breaks the whole way. Aaannddd… My tires caught on fire. I’m not kidding. I pulled over on the side of the rode to check out a cliff and I realized that my tires were smoking! I looked closer and saw that there were flames coming out through the holes in the hubcap! Thomas and I grabbed all of the water bottles in the car and started dousing the front two tires and eventually they stopped flaming and smoking. Crazy…

Here are the pics:

The route is marked in yellow, with the small yellow dots being the belays.

Getting closer to the start of the route. It goes up the obvious black streak in the middle of the picture.

Thomas in the bergschrund (the gap between snow and a cliff) at the base of the route.

Looking down from the top of the first pitch.

Thomas starting out on pitch 2. Beautiful rock!

Looking down pitch 3.

Thomas on pitch 4. The yellow arrow points to him.

Me on pitch 5.

Looking back across the big ledge at the top of pitch 5.

Thomas on the last pitch.

Cool rock!

Thomas moving from the anchors to the ridge top.

Me on the summit!

Looking through a sweet hole in the rock!

Me on top of the knife-edge summit ridge. Suh-weet!

Look how big and scary the face looks! The route goes up the obvious black streak in the middle.

I’m currently working with James Garrett on the second edition of his Ibex and West Desert guidebook. I had a few questions about Ibex, so James and I headed out there to clear some things up and maybe even do a little climbing. The weather called for rain and temps in the 50s, so it was hit or miss.

I’d been bouldering at Ibex before, but had never done any of the routes. The one time I went bouldering there (in spring 2008, I believe), I couldn’t stop staring up at the cliffs. I mean sure, bouldering is fun, but I’d rather get a bit higher off the ground.

I woke up at 5 and James called me a couple minutes later, and we agreed that he would meet me at the Wal-Mart in Orem at 5:45 and then we’d drive down in his car. The drive took about 3 hours, which was a little more than I remember it taking. Sure enough, the weather was a bit blustery, but still sunny. There was a group of older women there climbing (James knew a couple of them), and we stopped and chatted for a while before checking out the crag. To make a long story short, we pretty much walked the entire Ibex crag from left to right. It took a couple hours, since we stopped to talk about certain routes and walls along the way.

By the time we were done, the clouds had moved in and it had gotten significantly colder. There were even a few scattered raindrops. We stopped by to say hi to the women again and they made us some amazing sandwiches. Thanks, ladies! Then they left and James and I decided to get on a route. The route James wanted to do (I didn’t care what we did; I hadn’t done any climbing there so I was open to anything) was one put up the week before by some visiting Tyrolean climbers. It was called Light and Shadow, checked in at 5.11b R, and was three pitches long (plus two more pitches of an existing route to the top of the formation). The route goes up the beautiful slab to the right of the beautiful crack/corner of Absorption on the Shadow Buttress.

James wanted the first pitch (5.9) and I obliged. It was a long pitch and a bit runout, even with a few small cams supplementing the bolts. I got the second pitch, which started with some sweet moves over a roof (with some serious ledge fall potential if you fall before clipping the second bolt!) to some more runout climbing on easier terrain. The crux third pitch was also runout, but James kept his head together and fired the sucker. The climbing was really cool; beautiful little crimpers on bullet-hard quartzite.

The fourth and fifth pitches were mine and I combined them. The fourth pitch involved some really cool climbing on an arete. I even got to use a toe hook on the arete, which is always fun. The next short pitch goes out over a bulge. It goes free at 5.12, but I French freed it at 5.10/5.11ish. The view from the top of the route was pretty amazing. We could see all of the Ibex dry lake bed below us, and through breaks in the cloud cover we caught glimpses of Notch Peak to the north.

I forgot to mention that the wind started to really kick up for those last few pitches. And by kick up I mean 50 mile an hour winds! It was intense! The plummeting temperature didn’t help, either. We had to make several rappels down the face, which were somewhat unpleasant in such strong winds. I had a lightweight shell jacket and James had a softshell. I was afraid that I was going to get hypothermia or something, I was shaking uncontrollably and my hands were frozen.

Anyway, moral of the story: it was an epic climb. Great rock, sweet climbing (though runout), crappy weather, Two out of three ain’t bad, right? The weather didn’t get any better on the drive home; it was actually raining harder than I’d seen in a long time in Utah. But least we weren’t climbing in it by then…

The crag and the car.

The route climbs up the middle of the face to the right of the arching crack/corner.

James on pitch 1.

Mr. Ibex himself.

Looking down onto the hardpan.

Looking north. Notch Peak is the obvious peak in the distance.

Looking down at the boulders that Ibex is so famous for.

I’d been looking at the route Death By Chocolate (5.9 R, according to the first ascensionists, 9 pitches, 1700’) for years. It just seemed awesome—I mean 1700 feet of 5.6 or easier with a single 5.9 crux pitch? Yes please! The route is located on the Eastern Reef Slabs of the San Rafael Swell, a giant desert wasteland smack dab in the middle of Utah.

I recruited Thomas for this adventure. I’d only climbed with him once before—in Little Cottonwood Canyon a couple weeks prior. I actually called him to see if he wanted to climb some chossy little towers and then maybe go to the Eastern Reef slabs to check out a potential new route. He convinced me, though, to forgo the towers and just do a route on the slabs. After a fair amount of deliberation, we decided that we’d do Death By Chocolate.

The day of our climb, I picked Thomas up at 8:30 on campus (he had to go to his Portuguese class…) and after going to his place to pick up his gear, we were on our way. After about two hours, the eastern reef slabs came into view. The Death By Chocolate slab was easily visible and it looked absolutely massive. We exited the freeway and drove south on the dirt road that parallels the slabs.

Seeing the slabs up close for the first time was amazing. I’ve seen them at a distance a million times when driving to and from Moab. But seeing them up close made me realize how much rock there really is out there! I mean, there are several miles of 1000′ or taller slabs! Crazy! The place is stunning even from a non-climbing perspective. If the slabs were anywhere but Utah, I’m pretty sure they’d be part of a national park or national monument or something.

About two and a half hours after leaving home, we parked the car. The hike to the base of the route took about half an hour or so. The first part was over some dry, sandy washes. We didn’t see any trails, but we walked on sand and rock where possible to minimize any damage caused to the very prevalent and delicate cryptobiotic soil. After about fifteen minutes we entered the small slot canyon that leads to the base of the route. In one section the canyon was only a couple feet wide and we had to chimney our way up it. Further up, the canyon forked and we didn’t know which way to go; both ways looked like they involved some serious scrambling. We took the right fork and had to make some sketch moves on polished slabs over water-filled potholes. Fun!

The start of the route wasn’t too hard to find. An easy scramble led to a couple bolts to belay from. We got our harnesses on, got the gear ready, and headed up. I took the first pitch. There were three bolts in 300 feet of climbing, and the second (which Thomas led) was about the same. While the climbing wasn’t difficult (both of these pitches were about 5.6), the quality of the rock was less than stellar. A lot of the climbing was on hollow flakes and fragile edges. I wonder how much longer the features will be there for!

The second pitch ends at a ledge. From there you rappel down and right 80 feet to avoid some steeper slab climbing above. The next pitch, the third, is the crux. It was my lead and it actually wasn’t bad at all. There were several bolts that were relatively close to each other, and I even got a purple Camalot in near the start. The topos and commends I read online said that this cruxy portion was 5.9, but it felt like easy 5.8 to me. Thomas even thought it was 5.7. Either way, this was the only pitch on the route that wasn’t a full 200 feet long, and as such it was over pretty fast.

The next pitch (the fourth) went up a big, wide trough to belay at a couple boulders. There was no pro on this pitch, though the last few moves require some thought. The description we had of the fifth pitch (5.3) said to keep going straight up the trough to an anchor above a couple bushes. I could see some anchors above two bushes, but they were up and to the right, not straight up. I figured that those must be for one of the neighboring routes. I started climbing straight up but eventually got to some terrain that definitely felt harder than 5.3, and still I had no pro in. So I ended up traversing back over to the right on less than positive holds. After about 150 feet, I got a cam in, then got another one in 30 feet or so above that.

Thomas headed up the next pitch (the sixth), which started out going up a nice flake to a bolt. The second bolt was pretty far past that, but eventually Thomas found it. I was pleasantly surprised to find two bolts on the seventh pitch; I thought there was only going to be one. Thomas started to literally jog up the penultimate pitch, “Just so I can say I ran up it.” The pitch had one bolt. This led to me getting the final pitch. It’s an interesting thing to be climbing a pitch and facing a 400 foot fall. Yeah, the climbing is easy, but… zero protection on a 200 foot pitch? Is that really necessary? This isn’t juggy climbing. It’s a slab with small edges. And like I said earlier, the edges aren’t super solid. One of these days, one of those little edges is going to break and someone’s going to go for a massive ride.

Anyway, so I brought Thomas up to the final belay. The info we had said that there’s 40 feet of scrambling up and left to the top. Interesting… The scrambling looked no different from what we’d been doing for the last couple pitches. In fact, it was even a bit steeper. I gave Thomas a quick belay as he climbed to the top, then I tied the rope off, untied, and scrambled up after him. We topped out about three and a half hours after starting the climb.

The views from the top were awesome. In addition to miles of rock extending north and south along the reef from where we were, we could see the La Sal Mountains near Moab off in the distance. We signed the summit register (we were only the 14^th party to climb this route since its first ascent in 2003. Interesting. I thought it got climbed more often than that.) and wandered around a bit. There was a cool arch down to the east a nice “zen garden” (as Thomas called it) of trees to the west.

After spending about 15 minutes on top, it was time to get going. I down climbed/scrambled back down to the anchor and Thomas followed suit. The ensuing 8 rappels (one down each pitch to the bottom of pitch 3, then one 200′ rappel to the bottom of the canyon) took us about an hour and a half and were relatively uneventful. We were surprised to find a patch of snow at the bottom. I wonder how much snow there is here in high winter?

From where we ended up at the bottom of rappels, there is a 20 foot piece of rope connected to a bolt. It makes for a nice hand line while down climbing the tricky section. Another tricky move around a corner and a few more minutes of scrambling bring you back to the start of the route.

The rest of the walk back to the car was uneventful, with few things of note. We saw a big piece of petrified wood in the canyon that we didn’t see before. It was just propped up on top of a small boulder. Pretty neat. Also, remember how I mention above that as we were hiking up the canyon, we took the right fork? Well this time we took the left fork (though it’s the right one as you’re facing down the canyon…) and I think it was easier. It was more secure, anyway. And finally, just before we made it back to the car we stumbled upon a couple small knolls total covered with small pieces of red jasper. Very cool!

We still had a fair amount of daylight left, so we drove along the reef a bit, then headed north of the interstate to Black Dragon Wash, a very cool, narrow canyon with beautifully sculpted walls and some interesting petroglyphs. With that, the trip was over.

All in all, it was a fantastic day. I didn’t like the way the route was bolted, though. Sure, most climbers probably won’t fall on the 5.0 or 5.3 pitches, but eventually someone will and they’ll get jacked up. What for? In the name of “purity” of ethics? Or in the name of being too cheap to put more bolts in? Either way, I think it’s a shame the route was bolted the way it was. And I’ve bolted on lead, I know it’s a pain to have to drill 10 holes or more on a pitch when you’ve got to find stances to drill from, etc. But it doesn’t take that much time or energy to put, say, 4 bolts in on a 5.3 pitch.

Oh, and I’d call it 5.8 X, not 5.9 R.

The route.

The slot canyon on the approach.

One of several water-filled potholes.

The route starts on the smooth slab where the red/brown and white colors meet.

Looking up pitch 2.

Me on the crux pitch.

I love this picture!

Me on pitch 5.

Thomas on pitch 6.

Thomas on pitch 8.

Looking down on Thomas from the last pitch, pitch 9.

Me and Thomas on top.

Me on top.

The view to the south from the top.

Thomas at the bottom of pitch 3. Getting ready to make one last rappel into the bottom of the canyon.

Me (with awesome helmet hair) happy to take my climbing shoes off!

Watch for this piece of petrified wood as you hike up to the base of the route.

Beautiful Cliffs in Black Dragon Canyon.

Here’s a quick TR of some classic Little Cottonwood climbs Thomas and I did on March 17. We did Crescent Crack (5.7+, 3 pitches) to Crescent Crack Direct (5.9) to Final Link (5.9 bolted slab), then rappelled down and did The Coffin (beautiful 5.9 crack). The first pitch was fun, with a couple neat double cracks thrown in near the top. The offwidth/chimney on the second pitch was epic! It seemed really, really hard for 5.7! I spent a long time inching and grunting my way up that thing. It didn’t help that I had my water bottle on the wrong side of me… I think Thomas was wondering what took me so long, but he understood as soon as he got to the belay.

Thomas on pitch 1 of Crescent Crack

Me starting pitch 2.

Some dude on the second pitch chimney/OW on Crescent Crack.

Instead of traversing down and right to end Crescent Crack, I kept climbing straight up into Crescent Crack Direct for the third pitch. It was a sweet arcing 5.9 crack that led to a fun dihedral, a couple tenuous bolt moves, and then the belay at the base of Final Link.

Thomas led the beautiful Final Link slab pitch. Several widely-spaced bolts protected the featureless slab, and Thomas was a bit freaked out. He grabbed the first couple bolts but got his head around the runouts soon after, finishing the rest of the pitch without a problem.

Thomas on Final Link. Sweet pitch!

We then made a single rappel (with a double 60m rope) down to the base of The Coffin. This thing has to be one of the most beautiful cracks in the canyon! I led up it and had to rest once (stupid winter making me suck at climbing…), but man, it was sweet! Thomas TRd it and rested about halfway up at the same spot I did (the foot holds get small there). Such a cool crack!!!

Me on The Coffin. Amazing crack!

Some dude on The Coffin. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Since we didn’t bring out approach shoes up with us, we had to gingerly scramble down the gully and back to the start of the climb in our climbing shoes. Not fun.

I would love to do Final Link and The Coffin again, but I didn’t think Crescent Crack was all the great. Definitely worth doing once, MAYBE even twice at some point, but I need time to forget about that second pitch…

Finger of Fate (V 5.8 C3), The Titan, May 2009

The Titan is the tallest free-standing sandstone spire in the United States. It is also, quite possibly, the tallest sandstone spire in the world. It is certainly the most imposing. It is one of the spooky towers near Moab, Utah, that are collectively known as the Fisher Towers. This is how various guidebooks describe these terrifying totem poles:

“Wild mud curtains. Gnarled and twisted rock knobs. Frighteningly loose grit. Sketchy gear. Air clogged with dust. Welcome to the Fisher Towers, possibly the most challenging area for rock climbing in the desert Southwest. If you get good here, you can go climbing almost anywhere in the world and feel pretty comfortable on any kind of ground, including desperate alpine terrain” (Selected Climbs in the Desert Southwest).

“In all of the Canyonlands, no single grouping of towers is as grand and majestic as the Fishers; but by the same token, no other group of towers is as intimidating or outright dirty as these mud covered giants. Wild summits, fins, gullies, and erosion at work are all elements of the mud experience…. The mud casing makes placements difficult, tie-offs scary, anchors untrustworthy, and belayers miserable” (Classic Desert Climbs).

“To climb here is to submit oneself to several days of abuse, including fear, intimidation, frustration, and an all-encompassing grime. When touched, the dry mud veneer disintegrates to pebbles and grit, filling the air to the point of suffocation” (Canyon Country Climbs).

Sounds like fun, eh? Well, it is. It’s my idea of fun, anyway. I’ve climbed there with friends who swear they will never go back. But I’m obsessed. The Fisher Towers are the perfect epitome, the violent crescendo of everything that I love about climbing. Naturally, I had to climb the biggest of them all, the Titan.

The idea of a trip to do the Titan first hatched in my mind one night in May when I was camping alone out in the West Desert of Utah. I was spending a couple days there putting up new routes on some granite domes. It was nighttime and I had built a roaring fire out of old palettes and firewood. As I stared into the fire, I thought about all of the time I had spent climbing towers near Moab over the winter and spring. I had become obsessed. I wanted to go down to Moab every weekend. If I couldn’t find anyone to go with, I just went by myself. Climbing those hauntingly beautiful routes was deeply satisfying and fulfilling. I wanted to feel that again and I immediately knew what I needed to climb: The Titan. There is a famous classic route on it called The Finger of Fate. But who would I go with? All of my regular climbing partners were either not psyched enough or not skilled enough. And then I thought of Aaron. I’d never climbed with Aaron before but I knew that he was a good climber and was psyched on climbing in the desert. I sent him an email as soon as I got home the next day and he said he was in.

We drove out to Moab on a Monday, leaving Provo at about noon. We got to the Fisher Towers parking lot 4 hours later. We sorted gear and hiked in to the base of the Titan. The plan was to hike in, make sure we knew how to get to the tower, stash our gear at the base, and come back and camp at the trailhead. When we got to the base of the Titan an hour later, we just looked up with our mouths open and didn’t say much. We were each thinking the same thing: Man, that thing is big.

After a few hours of sleep we were up and back on the trail. We started climbing at about 7. Here’s a breakdown of the pitches:

Pitch 1: Aaron led the first pitch. He free climbed as high as he could, passed an intermediate belay, and started aid climbing. Eventually he got to the belay and I followed and cleaned the pitch.

Pitch 2: My turn. I combined the next two pitches to the base of the Finger. This lead took two or three hours and, at C3, was the hardest aid climbing I’d ever done (and the hardest we would encounter on the route). It certainly was scary. Lots and lots of small cams and nuts badly placed in crappy rock. I took two falls on the upper part of the pitch but eventually dispatched it.

Pitch 3: Aaron went right on a scary traverse to some holes with fixed Tricams in them. More scary pieces led up to the belay.

Pitch 4: Some scary (are you noticing a pattern here?) free climbing past some bolts to a nasty offwidth. I French-freed and aided the beast and it was still extremely awkward and hard. With heinous rope drag I went right, around The Duck, to the belay. Aaron and I both sat here for a while, relishing the position (there was a sheer 600 foot drop on either side of the belay). We were both pretty terrified at this point. The climbing was as mentally challenging as it was physically, if not more so. But we hadn’t gone this far to just turn around and go down. So up we went.

Pitch 5: Scary, easy free climbing led to ledge. From the ledge, Aaron went off to the right side of the tower to another aid seam.

Pitch 6: The last pitch. Mostly a bolt ladder, but even it was scary! At this point you’re climbing right on the edge of the tower. And it’s overhanging. And a lot of the bolts are old and funky and sticking half an inch out of the rock. I had to lasso one bolt that was too far away for me, even in my top steps.

From the top of the last pitch, Aaron and I unroped and scrambled to the tippy top of the tower. The view from the top was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever witnessed. The Mystery Towers, Onion Creek, the rest of the Fishers, the Colorado River, Castle Valley; it was all wide open and easily visible beneath us. We spent 20 minutes or so on top and then started the arduous and no less terrifying descent.  5 or 6 rappels got us back to the ground.

Climbing in the desert is a funny thing. The whole time I was climbing I just kept thinking to myself: “Never again am I doing this. This is way too scary, way too hard.” But then the second my feet touched solid ground after the last rappel, Aaron and I were already planning our next adventure (Phantom Sprint, anyone?).

The rest of the day was just as epic. An hour-long hike back to the car was followed by a 4 hour drive home. We got back to Provo at 2 in the morning, amazed that I hadn’t fallen asleep at the wheel and killed us both.

Photos (click for a larger version):

The Fisher Towers in winter. The Titan is the tallest tower, on the far right.

The Titan is on the right, with Oracle on the left. Finger of Fate roughly follows the left skyline of the Titan.

Aaron sorting gear in the parking lot.

Aaron on the first pitch.

Looking down from halway up the second (crux) pitch.

Aaron on the scary traverse at the start of pitch 3.

A crappy picture of me on the grunty pitch 4.

Aaron and me at the top of pitch 4.

Aaron starting up pitch 5.

Aaron higher up on pitch 5.

Bomber bolts...

Me on the final pitch, pitch 6. Reachy bolt ladder to exposed free moves. Cool!

Beautiful view of the rest of the Fisher Towers.

Our entry in the summit register. You know you're a climbing bum when you don't know what day it is...

The Titan. The route starts up the cracks near the left edge.

I wanted to go biking in Moab, but Chris and Crisco wanted to go climbing at a still semi-secret place in the West Desert. I’d climbed there a bunch last year and had pretty much done everything I wanted to do, but the majority ruled.

The rock at this place is really neat. It’s orange granite. Except that it’s really porous granite unlike anything else I’ve seen or climbed on. Crisco mentioned that it almost looks like a pumice/granite combination. Weird. But it’s really featured and has good friction.

After a nice two hour drive, we pulled up to the dome and did a two pitch 5.8. It was a lot of fun. I led the first pitch and it was a funky groove thing. Crisco led the second and it was more of the same—though my pitch was better. The weather was perfect and the climbing was fun. We rapped down and went to one of the smaller domes. We did a 5.8 crack, a 5.7 crack, and a 5.9 bolted face route. All of the routes were mine from last year. Then Crisco wanted to leave (Rainier all over again!) so we packed up.

As always, click on the photo for a larger version.

Me taking off on the first pitch of the two pitch route.

Looking up the first pitch.

This is a freaking awesome picture. See me in the middle there? How can you see a pic like this and not want to climb?!

Me and Crisco.

Chris on the 5.8++ crack. Short but fun.

Beautiful place, huh?

Me on my bolted 5.9 slab route.

By the end of November (the 28th, to be exact) I was able to convince Crisco to go back down to Moab with me. Neither of us really relish the camping experience and it’s not something we would choose to do if we didn’t have to, so we just went down for a day trip. The plan was to climb an easy, fun tower. We’d seen and admired Dark Angel on previous Arches trips and it looked pretty awesome, so we decided that that would be our objective.

Beta:
It took us an hour to hike there. I led the first pitch. It was slightly sketchy 5.7 to a sweet 5.9 finger crack. I tension traversed off of an old bolt and made it to the belay. I fixed the rope and Crisco jugged up. I led the second pitch, too. It involved some funky beached whale moves over a large block, which were followed by a 7-bolt bolt ladder. I aided past the first few bolts and then freed it to the top. The last 30 feet or so was easy (maybe 5.5ish) but completely unprotected. Definitely a “career ending” fall. The anchors at the top were solid (3 bolts? Maybe 4?) and the slings in ok condition. The rap down (doable with a single 60m rope) was free hanging and enjoyable.

Rack:
Take a set of cams to #3 (with an optional but recommended #4) and a set of nuts, plus a bunch of slings/draws.

Dark Angel is the solitary tower on the left.

A closer view of Dark Angel. The route goes up the back side.

Me starting up the first pitch.

The anchor at the top of pitch 1--two drilled angles.

Me snaking my way past the start of pitch 2.

Me on top.

Me on top, getting ready to rappel.

Getting ready to rappel, part 2.

All in all, it was a great day trip. It’s a pretty chill climb without any major difficulties. It was fantastic to be back int he desert. And it was tower 25 or 26 for me, and maybe ~10 for Crisco.