haishan - Sep 11, 2013 1:15 pm Date Climbed: Aug 13, 2013
Not good, but we probably didn't choose the best line.
We should have followed asmrz advice and stuck to the crest. Class 4 troughs on the right side are mostly loose and tenuous. We got off route looking for the "class 4" route around the right side of the towers, and climbed some weird steps with mandatory exposed 5.6 and 5.7 moves to get back to the ridge.
Penelope May-Smrz and I scrambled up the very seldom climbed East Buttress on July 10, 2012. None of the several available guidebooks have the route description quite correctly. We found sound rock on the buttress itself and some technical climbing on the prow of the first tower. We brought 8mm half rope and a few stoppers which were just (almost) OK for us. The summit register has no ascents of this route since 2006 (the age of the register) and our friend Doug Thompson at the Portal store has not heard of an ascent in (his words) many years. A pitty, if you take the buttress head on, there is some decent rock to climb.
haishan - Sep 11, 2013 1:15 pm Date Climbed: Aug 13, 2013
Not good, but we probably didn't choose the best line.We should have followed asmrz advice and stuck to the crest. Class 4 troughs on the right side are mostly loose and tenuous. We got off route looking for the "class 4" route around the right side of the towers, and climbed some weird steps with mandatory exposed 5.6 and 5.7 moves to get back to the ridge.
asmrz - Jul 12, 2012 4:45 pm Date Climbed: Jul 10, 2012
The East ButtressPenelope May-Smrz and I scrambled up the very seldom climbed East Buttress on July 10, 2012. None of the several available guidebooks have the route description quite correctly. We found sound rock on the buttress itself and some technical climbing on the prow of the first tower. We brought 8mm half rope and a few stoppers which were just (almost) OK for us. The summit register has no ascents of this route since 2006 (the age of the register) and our friend Doug Thompson at the Portal store has not heard of an ascent in (his words) many years. A pitty, if you take the buttress head on, there is some decent rock to climb.