Arch Canyon and Texas Canyons

Matt, Matt and I decided to head out to Texas Canyon and check out 'Lone Star' which is a tower I had been wanting to climb ever since Clay and I saw it over a decade before.  For the standard approach Lone Star is guarded by a long rough 4wd road.  For this trip we decided to opt for the rim approach which is an easy drive but requires a rappel and longer hike.  This approach was great because is offered a different view of the canyon and allowed us to scope out some other towers that were on the way.  Pickren lead pitch 1 and 4 while I linked 2 and 3.  This allowed our group of 3 to skip the hanging belay and go ledge to ledge.  Matt obviously hadn't climbed in the desert much recently before this trip as he kept complaining on the pitch 4 bolt ladder that the bolts were moving.  Matt had forgotten that movement is a safety feature of desert bolts.  The movement acts like a shock absorber when you fall on them.  We rappelled and hiked back to the vehicles vowing to return to the towers we had passed on the hike.  Pickren headed home and Matt King and I set up camp for the night.

Matt and Matt on top of pitch 4 on Lone Star.

The next morning we hiked into Dream Speaker.  After looking at both routes on the feature we decided to do the North Face route as it didn't mention any sections of loose rock.  Unfortunately they just opted to leave that part out of the description.  The start of pitch 2 requires pulling on some very fractured rock, the rest of the route though is great.  Again on the hike out to our fixed lines I scoped out another small tower that was unclimbed as far as I knew.  We headed back to the vehicle and back to Durango.

Matt following pitch 2 on the N. Face of Dream Speaker.

A few days later Pickren and I had 2 days off and started out at Broken Tooth Wall in Indian Creek.  We got in some great pitches and then the crowds descended so we headed back down to Arch Canyon.  By the time we got down there we had just enough light to go try the small tower I had scoped out by Dream Speaker.  We left the truck at 18:30 hiked to the rim, rappelled in, and climbed the tower.  Unfortunately there were bolts on top.  We learned later that the feature was called Sun Tower.  We did a FA but didn't do the FA of the tower.  We jugged back to the rim and hiked out getting back to the the truck at 20:00.

The next day we headed back to the towers we'd seen hiking to Lone Star.  We started with a tower we knew had been climbed called Cerro del Perro.  Then moved to a small spire that hadn't been climbed just below Cerro del Perro.  We called this Hair of the Dog Spire.  Next up was another small triangular tower that be believed was unclimbed.  Unfortunately once again it had been climbed.  Can't wait to head back out that direction!

Cerro del Perro with Hair of the Dog below.

Hair of the Dog