Echo Tower. Fisher Towers. Nestled against the La Sal Mountains, not far from the Colorado River east of Moab, lies the pink and orange skyscraper city of the Fisher Towers, weird, bizarre shapes honed strangely by the desert wind. Fragile ridges are sculptured into forms ranging from totems to the Gothic; one ridge has been dubbed "Ancient Art.” Five of these sandstone sentinels are colossi, and only two, the Titan and Fisher Tower, had been scaled up to this year. Echo Tower, midway between these two, rises 540 feet on the short face, and is perpendicular to the nth degree. Harvey T. Carter, Eric Bjornstad and I reached its fearsome summit on October 19, spending over five days on the ascent, with two bivouacs made on the summit push. Much of the route lay up a very vertical couloir with its inside walls sculptured into a continual succession of caves and overhangs. Placing bolts was slow work; in all the tower took 55 pitons and 71 bolts. The crux free climbing was an extreme F8 friction chimney rib, led by Carter, just above the first bivouac ledge. The hard labor of getting up the great succession of overhangs made the reward of reaching the exposed summit greater than on most climbs.

Fred Beckey