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Peak Mountain 3

All Along the Watchtower

FA Casey Yorkunas, Dave Lane, Anne Mellick, Mark Machezick 1998
CREATED 
UPDATED 

Description

Staring into a slimy waterfall with a pool of water at the base, the route doesn't look too appealing, but the last 5.11 pitch is wild.

P1: (5.9+, 60m) Bypass the wet and get into the 6" offwidth. Struggle to the top.

P2: (5.8, 20m) Chickheads to roof

P3: (5.11b, 30m) Various cracks, starting with fingers, eventually widening to hands, and then a short traverse right to a ledge. After the ledge, you break out left for the last 10m of the route. Definitely not thin hands to the top. Gear was on the thinner side for this last section to the top, 0.3-0.75, mainly 0.5's though.

Might consider breaking it up into 2 pitches to reduce rope drag (with the optional belay at a ledge). The drawn topo in the guidebook was on point, but the written description was quite off. Also, as of May 2018, there's a medium sized (the size of two stacked microwaves) block right at the lip of the ledge that rocks and should be avoided.

Descent:

We couldn't find the baked slings the guidebook alluded to, nor any rap anchors. We scrambled climber's right towards the trail that goes down the climber's left side of Voodoo Dome. There's a brief 4th class section to get to the trail. You may be able to sling a large knob to rap off, but we were concerned about getting the rope stuck.

Location

Look for a wet corner with a wide offwidth above.

Protection

Gear to #6 for off width with doubles in #4, standard doubles for the rest. All gear anchors.