Canyonlands. In March, Lauren Husted and I made the first ascent of a 300-foot Wingate spire on the Bridger Jack Ridge. A few weeks later, Bryan Becker and I free-climbed past two points of aid used on the original ascent at 5.11. This is a varied three-pitch climb, with a wild step-across to gain the summit block. In the same area, Alan Judish and I climbed two more of the virgin spires on the ridge, Sunflower Tower via the east face (5.10 + ) and the next day Hummingbird Spire by way of an exposed bolt ladder across a blank wall to the summit crack. With Udom Likhitwonnawut and Patrick Griffin, I came back a week later to complete the Wild West Show (III, 5.9, A1 ), a separate line on Hummingbird’s west face, a route rivaling the Kor-Ingalls on Castleton Tower as a good introductory route to the desert. Jeff Achey and I were successful on two more “classics” at Bridger Jack. On the King of Pain, the most remarkable spire of the group, we finally did the east-face dihedral, Vision Quest (III, 5.10, no bolts used). This is a beautiful four-pitch comer featuring all widths of jamming, well protected with Friends and a couple of large (6 and 7) tri-cams. Jeff “free-climbed” my original tension traverse across the summit notch by making a super-human leap. The next day, after placing protection bolts on aid, Jeff led one of Canyonlands’ most unusual pitches: an outside comer and arête up an apparently unclimbable spire, the second to last unclimbed tower in the area, Thumbelina (5.11). Near Super Crack, Griffin and I pieced together another very unlikely route, a 300-foot face-and-slab climb up a prominent friction prow, Orion’s Bow (5.10). We used 13 bolts and drilled angles, two wired nuts and not a single Friend and took 1½ days. On an earlier trip, Giffin and I also climbed Leapin’ Lizards, a short 5.9 finger-crack on Lizard Rock next to the Fisher Tower parking lot. Achey and I made it up one last new route, the Poseidon Adventure (5.9 + ), a topsy-turvy crack system on a secret spire before being thunderstormed off fifty feet from the top—luckily a rare occurrence in the desert.

Edward Webster