Route begins on the NW ridge of Cottontail Tower right off the trail.
P1- Follow the obvious feature straight up past one old bolt and a difficult roof mantle until you reach a large ledge and 3 bolt anchor. All clean, gear up to 4 inches (5.10+ C1+)
P2- Continue up and right past a poorly protected wide slot, continue via mixed free and aid to a 2 bolt station at the right edge of a small roof. Belay can (and should) be backed up with a .5 inch cam. (5.10 C2)
P3- Engineer moves right to the base of an old bolt ladder, follow this straight up to a new 3/8 inch bolt and negotiate the final move onto a great ledge with a 3 bolt anchor. (A2)
P4- Head around the corner and traverse the West face on run out moderate terrain, drop into an amazing bivy cave with a 3 bolt anchor, continue another 20 meters along the traverse past two old bolts on the "sidewalk" until it is possible to clip another 3 bolt anchor. No gear, two bolts. (5.8)
P5- Hoist your satchel, free climb left and up to an old bolt, mantle onto a shelf, mantle again, follow a sustained and discontinous crack system straight up passing 3 more old bolts. Continue slightly left into a crack to a great stance at a 3 bolt anchor. This pitch is requisite of numerous sawed angles, and a range of cams to 3 inches. Amazing pitch. (A3+)
P6- Follow the wide crack to the summit ridge and build a natural anchor. Take a couple larger cams and save a 3 inch for the belay. (5.9)
P7- Follow the ridge past a gap and fixed gear to a bolted belay.
P8- Head right of the belay, follow old bolts and new bolt studs up to a difficult and run out mantle move. Gain the shelf and find much needed gear. Continue up to a spectacular ledge with a 3 bolt anchor. (5.11R A2)
P9- Exit the right side of the ledge and negotiate your way right into a wide fluting, alternate aid moves and free moves past many old bolts to the summit ridge. Contemplate how Webster drilled this on lead. Locate and estrablish a great thread belay.
P10- Climb around to the east to gain the ridge or crawl through the hole (preferable), continue along the exposed ridge well around the east side of the summit block. Locate a wide right leaning crack. Follow this up to an old manky bolt, aid the lip and step onto the summit. The anchor consists of one good hangerless bolt, one pin and an old 1/4 inch. It is directly above the rap stations. Take a four inch cam. (5.6 C1)
Protection
Brer Rabbit is an excellant line comprised of mostly solid rock. The protection bolts are mostly all star drives and many are worn far out of the rock. A full range of gear is requisite. Double TCU's to #4 cams, and an extensive pin rack with emphasis on big sawed angles and regular angles up to #6 or #7 but some small iron as well. Nuts of any size proved fairly useless. Keyhole hangers and or regular hangers would be a great addition for some new bolt studs on the 8th pitch. Most anchors are bolted and contain at least one good 3/8 inch bolt amongst a pile of old mank, exceptions are the top of pitches 6 and 8,and the summit block which are all fairly old hardware. The natural anchors require some creative threading but are solid.
By Andrew Gram Administrator From: Denver, CO Oct 22, 2002
Enjoyed watching y'all on the route this weekend. I took pictures of you guys standing on top of the Cottontail from near the top of the Kingfisher, so send me your email address and i'll send the pictures to you when they are developed.
Amazing route. Hats off to Ed Webster. I noticed that this route description states that Nuts are "useless". I disagree. We found that large hexes pounded sideways into the back of flares were really effective. They just seemed to bite right in. I'd say that a selection of about 5 or 6 med. to large hexes would be enough. These are also alot lighter than bongs which we didn't use nearly as much as the hexes. Also, the "5.11" mantle is no scarier or harder than any of the other free sections you have to do on just about every pitch. This is no "stopper" move. Just one like many, many others. The fact that Ed pieced this together by himself is really impressive. What a tower! Scott Rourke
We climbed this route clean on 3/4-5/06.Tricky(maybe desperate)in a few spots but overall n.t.b.,C3+.Sawed angles,offsets,loweballs,tri- cams,"fraid" moves etc..the usual fishers stuff.The crux pitch was climbed clean on an earlier attempt in Jan.The craziest placement being the two smallest loweballs stacked and shoved up into a blind L.A.slot! There are some somewhat scary runout situations on the harder pitches.We hand hauled a small pack and it sucked due to all the traversing sections.Overall an awesome route but exhausting. Great effort by Ed,solo,in the 70's,sans modern gizmos... All the rap stations down road kill need revamping.From the anchors at the end of pitch 4 you can fix down and right to an old station on a slab w/2 stardryves,then to the ground(2 60m ropes).That station is directly below the bivy cave. -Miles Newby & Marcus Garcia
The bivy cave is plush but hauling on this thing would be a nightmare. You could leave all your gear at the cave and go for the summit but getting back to the bivy would be tedious at best.I thought the ledge atop pitch 3 would be a better bivy because it's right on the ridge. Best to just fix then cruise it the next day. Wear your rock shoes if the're comfy.We had no problem freeing with our beat up approach shoes.If your sack is feeling particularly big on this route then you could free up to 5.11 and beyond. Certainly subjective, but we were freeing stuff that seemed mandatory 5.10(for us).We were also in some sort or weird twilight zone (at least I was) on this route - it felt alot different than the other towers here and I was glad to get back to terra firma.
Cottontail Tower
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