Poseidon Adventure

You know where this is! Park just past the "Buffalo Boulder" but before the Big Bend area.

Try and find the trail to preserve the slope, and make your approach much easier.

The route follows the system below the notch left of the summit. The route can be done in 4 or 5 pitches depending on how you handle the easy traverse around the tower.

Pitch 1, 5.8+ : So so climbing to a good belay... and keep ALL your big gear handy.

Pitch 2, 5.10 : This is the crux pitch - a flaring chimney with an slightly overhanging offwidth crack. Seems like two 4 camalots, one 4.5 camalot and a 5 friend would be fine, although it can obviously be done with less by simply bumping gear. Fairly strenous climbing, but certainly can be made easier or harder based on your approach to the climbing. The overhang becomes vertical again and turns to a fist and then hand crack. Move left to a huge ledge and belay.

Pitch 3, maybe hard 5.9 for a couple moves : Climb using a crack and face holds on OK rock. A squeeze leads to a ledge at the notch. Belay at an anchor here or continue with rope drag around the small "sidewalk" to another belay.

Pitch 4, walk around step across: From here a very easy, yet exposed "sidewalk" takes you around to the south side of the tower. There is one bolt to protect the technical move which brings you to yet another set of anchors on the south side. [ See notes below ]

Pitch 5, 5.9 : I won't say much to spoil the good times. There is an intermediate anchor on your way to the summit, but it may not be worth stopping (just clip). Summit and down climb the tower at grade 5.Concentrate.

Rappel two 60m ropes to the south notch from the anchor near the "sidewalk" (not the upper anchor). This gets you to the ground on the east side. Make a short 50 foot rappel to the ground on the west side.

This is a very fun and adventurous route. For the grade, very different from Lonely Vigil, but both are very fun routes.

We had almost 2 full sets of cams. Leap frogged wide cams on crux wide pitch. Two old style 4 camelot's, and one 4.5 useful. Maybe another wide piece too depending on how comfortable one is with wide cracks or leap frogging and shuffling gear. A couple .75 camalots useful for pitch 1, but once again back-cleaning or leap frogging helped me get by with only one.