This is a three pitch route up a huge dihedral that culminates in a wonderful roof crack 0.5 - 0.75 cams! The first two pitches are a wide corner and can be a bit spicy due to thinking that everything is going to break. We cleaned a bunch off the lower 2 pitches, and I feel it's pretty safe, but I am sure that someone will find more loose rock.

Solar Impact

The Junk Ride

Lemonade

Tabeguache Tower

Guantastic

Rough Rider (thanks d-ron)

Maximum Impaction

Eve of War

Waxing Gibbous

Lemon Squeezer

Dead President

Uncle Fester

Cousin It

Bromance

This is a good looking flake/corner.  There is no fixed anchor. It i an easy walk off back to the car.

This

nearly

independent line offers plenty of adventure and some choss. All belays are on ledges. All belays are bolted. This is a route with a little bit of everything, but mostly the wide. A good time if you're into that sort of thing.

Pitch 1: Start up a dihedral that is thin and climb up to a large chossy ledge. Go up the perfect hand crack to below a roof. Traverse left and around the large roof, chimney up to where the large roof/block is broken, traverse right at the horizontal break. Do a mantle and continue traversing right until you reach a nice ledge with two bolts. ~110 feet.

Pitch 2: Climb up the obvious off hands to offwidth crack until it widens to a chimney. Keep thrutching until you reach a saddle where you can tunnel through the tower and climb the leaning pinnacle by stemming and chimneying. This gets you to a the shoulder and the anchor. Run out chimney climbing. ~160 feet.

Pitch 3: Traverse and clip one bolt, mantle to ledge and 4th class the traverse right and up to another saddle where the prominent summit begins and at a bolted anchor. 50 feet.

Pitch 4: This last pitch is the original summit pitch of the Tabeguache Tower route. Originally it had many empty holes that house shallow angles or beaks/peckers. With the go-ahead from the FA party, we replaced three of the six or so holes with bolts. This now goes free but can be aided as well with the use of the other holes. Stem up the saddle and lean across to clip the first bolt. Make an arete move to move up and reach the ledge, mantle, and surmount stacked choss. Clip another bolt and make a strenuous move on sandy slopers to the summit anchors. Clip in and make another move to reach the actual summit.  ~60 feet.

This is a variation in the middle of the

Lemon Squeezer

.

Start as normal for the

Squeezer

. Go through the first section of slot canyon, and squeeze up through the hole to the large opening. Locate where the

Squeezer

turns left into the narrower canyon. This is where you leave the normal route for the

Squeezer

.

Instead of following the bottom of the slot canyon as you normally would, chimney straight up for about 30 feet, utilizing several sloping ledges, until you emerge into open air on one side, with the way to the very top of the slot blocked by a huge chockstone. Surmounting the chockstone is the crux. I used several small face holds in addition to chimney technique. An unroped fall here could see one bouncing off a ledge and tumbling 50 feet to the ground.

The next obstacle is 4th Class/5.easy traversing along the side of the steep, patina covered ridge to where you can drop down into the

Squeezer

proper. This section has 70 feet of exposure and is very treacherous. Consider bringing rappel gear and bailing at this point instead of doing the traverse.

Then continue through the crux of the

Squeezer

.

It has fine climbing on good rock with an excellent view of Rough Canyon and Grand Mesa from a very small, 1 person summit. It is located near Grand Junction, east of Colorado National Monument.  The route ascends an obvious crack system on the east face.

Pitch 1: Begin on a thin crack (A1/C1), follow this until a blocky section is reached which can be free climbed (5.8) to a good belay ledge atop a large block. 120 feet (37m)

Pitch 2: Climb a fist crack (5.8) to a large bombay chimney. Move left around a huge fin inside the chimney and climb some offwidth and squeeze to a small roof, (5.9). Aid the roof (A0, #4 Camalots) and climb 30 unprotected feet (9m) up a squeeze chimney (The Time Warp), then past some loose rock to a 2 drilled-pin belay at the saddle, 5.9R. 150 feet (46m).

Pitch 3: Aid climb with Beaks in drilled holes and a couple of Knifeblades to a 2 drilled-pin anchor 10 feet (3m) below the summit, (A1). Scramble to the summit with a leash.

Descent: Rap to the anchors at the saddle at the top of the 2nd pitch. Rap to the west, to the saddle between the tower and the wall. Scramble down and to the north to some webbing around a large block on the opposite side of the gully. Rap to the ground.

Guantastic climbs a nice, right-facing, dihedral system starting out in a offwidth, then goes for hands most of the way, then concludes with a nice fingers lieback. Finish at a two bolt anchor.

Pitch 1: Fun face climbing past small gear leads to groove climbing. Then a final traverse out right to a two bolt anchor. 90-100 feet.

Pitch 2: traverse back out left to a beautiful, right-facing, fingers corner. Looks and climbs very similar to the crux pitch of Cloud Tower. Climb fingers to a pod, then tips out a roof. Finish with face climbing protected by two bolts. Rap off of a two bolt anchor. 65-75 feet.

Notes: Pitches one and two can be combined with little rope drag. If toproping the second pitch it is advisable to leave a piece of gear in the tips roof; otherwise the rope may get stuck.

This has one pitch of sustained 5.8 moves with good hands. It is solid at the grade and rare for good moderates on this rock.  From the comfy belay ledge, Julian pushed a second pitch out 20 feet right on a foot travere then climbed a good 5.10 corner another 30 feet until the climbing became thin and desperate. Any attempt at finishing this line would prove demanding. Trundling is the crux.

The thin lieback at the start is probably the crux, though moving up on face holds once the crack widens is also a bit tricky. With traffic, this climb will get better and better. It's still a little loose and lichen abounds. Hey, maybe I should call it "Lichen Abounds".

From the top, walk off to the left either back to the car or over to Dead President. This is much easier than trying to get back to the trail from the top of Gibbous.

This is a slot canyon, usually climbed in sneakers with no rope. The crux is a chockstone near the end that one must jam up and over. When one reaches the large open air area after leaving the slot, one has three choices:

1. End as most people do by descending the class 3 gully; or

2. Cut back up and right to higher ground and an elegant Bonus Slot to reach the top of the hill, or

3. Enter a very deeply cut slot with a difficult move (5.8) to surmount. We call this variation the Iron Lung because of the extreme tightness. The variation was, we think, first done by Bill Briggs and Stan Wagon in March 2015. From the end of that, one would also finish with the Bonus Slot.

For options 2 and 3 one can descend easy ground directly to the stream crossing near the car.

A detailed trip report is at the first two links

here

The crux is at the start just past the second bolt on the face. Once you have made the crack climbing is much easier.

The crux is at the first overhang, but you really don't get much rest through the whole climb except for right before the first overhang. The route has 2 bolts beside the flake, because the flake is fairly thin, and we thought it would break if any gear was fallen on.

Oct. 17, 2018: we decided the bolts for the first pitch were in the wrong location, so we pulled them and extended the route another 25 feet. This will make it so the second pitch doesn't have as much rope drag. The bolts are past the second overhang and below the third one, hard to see from the bottom of the route, but if you step back, they can be seen. The second roof adds a lot to the climb and keeps the first pitch the same rating of 5.11 b/c. Nate Wilson led it without falling or hanging. The rest of us hung as we followed (Brad Sheneman, Dave Brito, KC Luis).

Nate had a little issue with rope drag from a piece placed right and below the first overhang. We figured if you placed just below the roof and as far left as possible with a 0.3 Camalot and added a long sling, the rope would stay out of the crack once you pull the roof. It wasn't an issue until after the roof was below the lead climber.

If you can climb 5.11 trad, this is a must do route!

This is a sport route that climbs on thin edges and has fun smearing.

Description

Location

Protection

Routes in Rough Canyon