Deer Ridge Buttress and Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park. On August 10, Scott Hall and Skip Daniel ascended a new route on Deer Ridge Buttress (II, 5.8.). It begins 100 feet left of Rainbow Rock and follows a direct line up the slab from a large pine tree growing out of the base of the rock to a dead tree 165 feet above on a major ledge and thence directly to the top of the formation. The first pitch starts up unprotected 5.6 climbing to an area of good cracks for protection and eventually a 5.8 crux friction mantle move. A horizontal flake 150 feet up provides a good belay. Pitch 2 follows an enjoyable 5.6 handcrack, and the final pitch (5.4) continues into the Rainbow Rock route. Unreported from 1986 is a new route (III, 5.10) on the east face of Longs Peak done by Kurt Oliver and me on July 30,1986. Oliver christened it “Detterlines’s Folly” because of my inability to follow any easier established routes. The seven-pitch line, done as a finish to Alexander’s Chimney and the lower Eighth route, ascends a chimney system on the right of the upper Teeter Totter Buttress on mainly moderate rock, passing through a 40-foot section of 5.10 fingercrack shortly before finishing on the regular Teeter Totter route. Also unreported from 1986 is a two-pitch 5.8 route on Alligator Rock done by Lisa Reilly and me on August 9, 1986. It ascends the center of the 305-foot slab between the rappel gully and the central crack. It is mostly unprotected face-and-friction climbing.

James Detterline