Rising Spirits

​​​​​This climb is located on the Southwest face of the Hermit Spire. Stash your packs at the top of the formation and hike down slabs and pine needle-covered dirt on the west side to the bottom of the spire. The climb begins on a low angle chimney in a major dihedral to the left of some obvious large spires at the toe of the formation that separate the SW face from the South face.

Pitch 1: Climb up a low angle chimney that slims down to a squeeze for a few moves and becomes low angle. (5.8, 80 feet).

Pitch 2: Move your way up the slippery slot off the belay and into a dihedral/chimney to a roof. Layback left of the roof on slick feet but good pro and continue up the giant flake with plenty of smaller, loose flakes and grainy rock. Belay on top of the giant flake you climbed using finger size pro in the flake itself. (5.10+, 110 feet).

Pitch 3: Move left off of the giant flake (pro is a small slung horn) and face climb to a shallow, right-facing dihedral (bring large brass nuts for this section). Continue up to an old bolt (unnecessary) then face climb right past another old bolt and then up to a ledge with an obvious bush to belay (5.8+, 100 feet).

Pitch 4: This pitch differed considerably from the description in the Solem guide. Continue up an extremely featured, low angled, right-facing dihedral to a small roof and then move slightly left to another dihedral that is climbed to a large ledge with a detached boulder/flake above you (5.6, 160 feet).

Pitch 5: We climbed to the right of the large boulder/flake above the belay and then continued up an easy but splitter, beautiful finger crack that becomes lower angle the higher you go. Belay off of a slung boulder below a 50' gendarme on the ridge. (5.5, 200 feet). There is apparently a 5.9 finger crack to the left of the large block above the belay but we were on cruise control and didn't look.

Pitch 6: Climb up easy finger and hands directly above the belay on the gendarme (don't skirt it to the the left) and continue walking the ridge to the obvious summit block (5.5, 200 feet).

Pitch 7: This is a novel finish akin to ridge traverses in the Bugaboos. Super cool. Traverse right (east side) under the overhanging summit block with a hand crack for pro and slabby feet. Move up on easy cracks to the summit proper with a bolt to belay. You can also clip this bolt and move right for 30 feet to a 2 bolt belay. This is the rappel for the formation. Use long slings for this pitch otherwise the rope drag is immobilizing (5.7, 100 feet).

Descent: A single 30 meter rappel down the NE ridge will get you to boulders and your packs. Bring fresh tat for the rap. The stuff we found looked like it hadn't been replaced in years so I left my chalk bag belt.

Southwest face

Nuts and double rack from 1 to 3 inch. Single set of TCUs. Brass nuts for pitch 3.