Big Ben Tower- Der Leavenworth

[slaphappy]

In an effort to help make this forum a success (and the promise that it will remain relatively spray free) I decided to share a fine route with the masses.

 

Needing a break from the long approaches and massive amounts of bugs, a friend (HeadSpace) and I decided to do some mid summer L-town cragging. We opted to head to Big Ben Tower to see what it had to offer. Gear to 3" should suffice.

 

Approach: Big Ben Tower sits above and slightly East of Careno Crag, easily visible from Icicle Road. From the base of the Regular Route continue up a faint trail to the base of Exotic Dancer (has been retro cleaned!) Continue up and right along the base of a series of broken crags (some good short cracks and faces) to the base of Fishtoe. As the crags end, Big Ben becomes visible a short ways straight up. Aprox. 1 hr.

 

The route: There are a number of crack systems (mostly short and wide) that lead to the top of the tower but the most stunning and obvious is the system on the left side of the South face. From the left toe of the tower climb mid fifth to a slab with an old 1/4" spinner, cross the short slab to a roof with a large chock stone blocking the entrance to a chimney. Grope, grovel, and grunt past the chock stone (5.10) to a good stance below the squeeze chimney. Climb chimney (5.8) and gain a perfect forty foot hand crack (5.8) to a ledge with a shrub. (We belayed here although it would be possible to continue through to the top.) From the shrub, continue up the hand crack to the summit.(5.8) Total length aprox. 180'.

 

Descent: Upon finding no reliable rappel station, we decided the small tree previously used had been burned in the 94' fire. There is now a fixed station heading into the notch to the North. Aprox. 50'

 

Although there is not a huge amount of climbing for such a long approach, we felt it was well worth the effort.

 

Cheers!

[Sphinx]

[Crackbolter]