The King’s Pawn

This route was not established by me. This tower is visible from Mexican Mtn Road and the tower casts a shadow on the wall behind.

We climbed this tower in two pitches and approached from the right (east) side of the tower. There is a ramp up the side of the tower that leads to an easy chimney. We solo'd up this chimney to a ledge to rope up.

Pitch 1: Climb up the easy chimney box with the hand crack on the left side and larger crack on the right. There is an engaging step around to the left that led to the larger crack and the ledge for the belay. There is a reachy 2-bolt belay on the ledge.

Pitch 2: Lead up the bolt ladder. The first move requires a micro cam (we used a BD Red #1 C3). There was then a bolt, fixed nut and 13 bolts. This pitch ends up being ~15 bolts, the small cam and fixed nut.

The bolted anchor on the summit is fine, but could use more webbing to set up the rappel in a desirable manner.

Rap: We used a quad length runner to rappel to the east. If longer material is brought it could be ideal to rap down the south face of the tower. We brought 2 70m ropes and reached the ground easily. It may be possible to use a single rope and rap back to the anchor at the top of pitch 1. That anchor had 2 rap rings on it, but the next rap would be to the west and we didn't want to risk any stuck ropes.

This tower is located down the east fork of this amphitheater. Check the approach info from the area page.

A single rack with micro cams and 16 alpine/quickdraws (or less if you back clean any bolts).