Granite Mountain Teaser

Finally the weather forecast looked decent, so Oct 24th, Dawn and I headed down to Prescott to climb on Granite Mountain. The drive was longer than we liked, but uneventful. Then we hiked in and up to the mountain.


On the way we saw 3 tarantulas cruising along. They seemed pretty oblivious to us.


Once we left the main hiking trail we managed to get a bit lost in the rocks, brush, and cacti. Eventually we made it up to the base of the climb along with a surprising number of other climbers and dogs.

The climb we planned on was "Classic", but we ended up with variations on almost every pitch, starting out with Dawn leading "Crack Lover's Variation". For the second pitch I did a pitch of "Slammer Jammer". I'm not sure what we did for the 3rd pitch, it certainly wasn't what our descriptions of the route suggested, but some other climbers said it was the 3rd pitch of "Classic". This took us to the junction of the flying buttress with the main wall. I traversed out on the top of the buttress before finishing up on "Beaver Cleaver" to the top. We had a fat pill to celebrate before rapping down. We weren't sure if the first rap would go with a single 60M rope, so we did some fancy single rope rapping. I think it might have been ok with the 60 and rope stretch, but I am not sure. The next 2 raps were easy, then we had to hike back and make the long drive up to Flagstaff.

Dawn at the 3rd belay from the top of the flying buttress.

Dawn at the same spot viewed from above

Fat pill on the top

Link to my Granite Mountain web page about this trip (about the same but a bit more)