Seeing the Light

This was Homie's first trip climbing in the desert. He was so excited he went out at lunchtime to buy the guidebook. He was dismayed to find that there were no routes in the entire book he'd like to lead. The steep walls and towers of the Colorado Plateau don't lend themselves to moderate routes. The real climbing starts at 5.9 and there are precious few routes easier.

We headed out from Denver at 5 p.m. on Friday night in two SUV's: Trashman and I in one and Ken and Homie in the other. There's just too much junk for all of us to fit in one vehicle. Especially since Ken and Homie were both bringing mountain bikes. The plan was for all of us to climb Lighthouse Tower on Saturday and then only the Trashman and I would attempt the ultra-classic Primrose Dihedrals (5.11+) on Moses Spire. Plus, I had to get in a 14 mile run after the climb on Saturday as I was nearing the end of my marathon training.

We climbed Lighthouse Tower and did the wrong route! Turns out I made the first free ascent of an aid route. At only 5.9+! The drawback was that I had to run it out on 5.9 offwidth a horrendous distance as I didn't have anything bigger than a #4 Camalot. We later found out that the guidebook recommended a #5 Camalot and a #6 Big Dude for the aid route. That would have been nice. At one point my partners contemplated rapping off and hiking back to the car (1000' vertical descent) and getting the #5 Camalots. I finally just sucked it up and went for it. I climbed myself into the point of my return. I got to a cave and there was no gear. I couldn't downclimb safely as I was looking at a 30 foot fall onto a protruding flake. I thought about jumping, but that seemed a bit radical. By jumping I could miss the protruding flake, but the Camalot pulled I might hit the ledge and even if I missed the ledge everything else would have probably pulled also and I'd have hit the ground from over a hundred feet up. Nope. The risk was to great for that. All that practice of jumping off things in the gym just didn't seem to compare to this situation.

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Ken Leiden's assessment:

Hey fun hogs,

While Shel flew to S CA to visit her famille this weekend, I headed to the desert for some high adventure. Sat our objective was Lighthouse Tower, a 220 ft. desert spire that rises 900 ft above the Colorado River. We were two parties of two. The rope teams were Bill Wright & John Prater and George Bell & myself. The route we intended on doing was rated 5.9 with 30 ft run-outs -- not my thing these days. But since George & Bill were doing Primrose Dihedral on Moses the following day and this was their climb of choice for a warm-up, I knew George would take the hard and/or scary leads if I wasn't up for it.

Because of poorly-worded description of the route in Knapp's "Classic Desert Climbs", we ended up doing the wrong route. The route we ended up doing was a slight variation to a route listed in Eric Bjornstad's "Desert Rock" as being 5.8ow A2 and required #6 friends to protect it. However, since we thought we were doing the route in Knapp's book and had beta from a friend who had done it, the biggest gear we brought was two #4 camalots. This would cause some stress for Bill later on.

After 2 approach pitches (5.7 & 5.5) to get to the notch between the Dolomite(the adjacent spire) and Lighthouse Tower, we were confronted by a nasty-looking off-width that went through 3 bulges. Bill made his way up through the first two bulges with confidence despite very dubious protection -- a tipped out #4 eight ft below him protected the 2nd bulge. The 3rd bulge loomed above and was the most intimidating of the three. Bill was dismayed that once again the crack was too wide for gear.

We contemplated what to do:

1) Bill could down-climb the previous bulge (scary and difficult)

2) Bill could climb (solo?) the 3rd bulge (scary and difficult)

3) I could run down to the truck and get a #5 camalot (take a long time)

4) George could try another way up and throw a rope down to Bill (nothing to

lose)

5) Bill could jump so he could pseudo-control where he landed (psycho)

George took a look at the corner to our right, but said it wouldn't go. I was thinking of going down to the truck when Bill decided to tunnel 6 ft into the crack and managed to place *another* tipped out #4. This gave him the confidence to try the third bulge. As George, John and I watched with fear and loathing, Bill made sketchy face moves over the bulge before moving back to the security of the crack. Soon after, he stood at a huge belay ledge.

Hoo-rah!! John followed next and fell at this very bulge. George followed next with no falls. When I got to the top of the 2nd bulge, a hand-hold coated in desert varnish started to break loose. I weighted the rope as I sent the 1ft x 5in x 2in chunk crashing down. Adrenaline anybody? That scared me good, just glad it held for Bill (if he even used it). The third bulge felt like solid 5.9 to me and I had the security of a top-rope. Bill did a helluva job on that lead. BTW, the A2 section avoids the third bulge by following a knifeblade crack to the right so the bulge itself isn't rated in any guidebook.

We re-grouped on the huge ledge and looked at the final pitch -- a 5.8 squeeze chimney followed by low angle face. Back to two teams, Bill and George would each lead this pitch. The summit was capped by a 5ft long by 3ft wide block and overhung on all sides. A 5.8+ mantle put you on the top. There was a runner hanging over the edge so Bill was able to clip it before doing the mantle. Of course, he didn't know exactly what he was clipped to which no doubt added to the *excitement*. The anchor on the summit was a spike of metal sticking 1 inch out of the rock with the runner looped around it -- no hangar. Any upward pull would cause the runner to slip off. Fortunately, 10 ft below the summit block was a solid anchor with 3 bolts. After Bill summitted, we joined him at this anchor and climbed the summit block one at a time. Then, as delicate as possible lowered off. 3 raps on good anchors put us back at our packs. What a cool climb! What a great day!

Bill went for a 14 mile run while the rest of us headed to the local brew-pub, Eddie McStiff's. After the run, Bill, George & John headed off for Moses.

Meanwhile, Don Durso, Bill Rogers & Scott Cornwright had arrived. After another round at Eddie's, we had a bite to eat at the Hacienda. Then we headed back to their campsite in isolated canyon accessible by 4wd. We had a good campfire thanks to Don's wood gathering effort and Bill's bottle of lighter fluid. The next morning was warm, but cloudy. I went for an early morning hike to check out the Maiden, a 200 ft spire at the top of the canyon. Looks doable, I need to do some research on this to see if its been climbed.

We amused ourselves for an hour or so playing frisbee. We then motivated to do a mtb ride. Unfortunately, while descending the 4wd section, Don's fork popped out of my crappy, rusted-out bike mounts. The rear wheel was still attached to the bike tray so his bike slammed into the side of my car and the bike pedal gashed the paint and glass. It also snapped the metal tab on Don's suspension fork, putting his bike out of commission. As it was, it soon started raining and it was obvious that we wouldn't be riding or hiking anytime soon. We gave the weather a half-hour, but the rain only got worse. As beautiful as the desert is, there isn't much to do when its cold & rainy so we headed back to Boulder, ending a short, but memorable desert trip.

--Ken

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John Prater's assessment:

Mike,

We had a good trip to Moab. Bill, George, Ken and I drove out on Friday night and camped near the Fisher Towers. We got up lazily on Saturday morning and drove down to Lighthouse Tower which is across from the Big Bend campground along the River Road. We packed up and hiked for about 45 minutes up to the start of the climb.

We planned to do the Lonely Vigil route on Lighthouse Tower (325 feet?) which is supposed to be 5 short pitches, I think (5.7, 5.?, 5.9, 5.9, 5.9). We (Bill & I, George & Ken) did the first short 5.7 pitch which puts you on the ground on the opposite side of the tower. We walked past the tower (past our route!) and climbed another short 5.5 pitch to a notch between Lighthouse Tower and Dolomite Tower. We thought this was the route, but, once we reached the notch, the route description stopped making sense. There were supposed to be 2 cracks heading up. All we saw was a wide crack (8-10"?) heading up to chain anchors with a thin crack shooting off to the right about 50 feet up. The biggest gear we had was a couple of #4 Camalots.

Bill took all the big gear and started up the offwidth crack. He made pretty good progress with minimal gear (2 RPs, a green Alien with 2 cams in, a pretty good #2 Camalot, a pretty good #4 Camalot which he thought was tipped out, and an ancient bolt which he eventually unclipped) up to a cave. I think he trusted none of the gear in the Navajo sandstone which crumbled and broke as he checked and stepped on holds. Bill seemed a bit relieved to reach the ledge and the cave until he looked up. He saw no opportunites for gear in the continuing offwidth overhead. I think Bill was here for at least 20 minutes, with George and Ken searching for an alternate route. Bill finally crawled deep into the cave and was able to place the other #4 Camalot about 8 feet in. We couldn't see him at all as he placed this piece. With this security, Bill quickly finished the pitch at the chain anchors and an enormous ledge.

Watching Bill lead struggle through this pitch, I was about ready to give up on the tower. I'd just let the other guys finish it. Bill told me I had to get up to his location so I started up with an "I'll see how far I get" attitude. I trailed the other rope behind me as George didn't really want to lead this pitch. I actually made it up this pitch, my first offwidth, with only one minor weighting of the rope. I never did completely hang (well, I don't think I did), but I was scraped up and out of breath when I reached the ledge. Bill belayed George and Ken up as I cleaned up the rack and rested. Ken pulled off a large flake that the rest of us had probably used while climbing this pitch.

The next pitch was a squeeze chimney to some unprotected face climbing to more solid anchors. Bill led this well and actually climbed to the top of the tower above the anchors before I followed the pitch. There was a sling around a short post on the summit so I lowered him back to the anchors. We thought we would have to downclimb the summit block so this tiny post was welcome. I probably wouldn't have made the summit if I hadn't been on a toprope and could lower off. I grunted up the squeeze chimney, wishing I had kneepads, and joined Bill at the belay. I hesitantly made my way onto the summit block while George and Ken climbed the squeeze pitch. All of us made the summit, one at a time. Awesome! The descent went without a hitch with 3 rappels.

We pretty much concluded upon reaching the packs that we hadn't climbed Lonely Vigil. Looking at the guidebooks back at the car, we found out we had done the Northeast Route, 5.9 A2 or A3! The aid part was the thin crack shooting off to the right where we continued up the offwidth.

Bill went for a 2 hour run while George, Ken and I headed to Eddie McStiff's for dinner and so Ken could meet up with his biking buddies. Bill, George and I then drove out toward Canyonlands and Moses. We camped at the top of the steep descent to Mineral Bottom.

We woke up to cloudy skies. Bill and George lacked the motivation to do Primrose Dihedrals on Moses so they found an alternate route to climb on Monitor or Merrimac Butte. I had them drop me off at the highway with my bike about a mile from the start of the Gemini Bridges trail. I rode about 17 miles on Gemini Bridges, planning to run into George and Bill somewhere along the road. At about 11 am, it started to rain so I ducked under an information shelter along the highway and waited for them to come by. They drove right past me at about 11:45 so I waited another 20-30 minutes until they came back and found me. It was windy and raining the whole time. We headed straight for home. They hadn't done their climb because the rain started as they reached the end of their road and the start of their approach. They made the right decision not to try Moses.

Fun trip. We need to improve so we can go climb out there. Everything is hard. I've got several routes (5.8ish) that I'd like to do in the desert now.

Later,

John