South Face, The Dodger

A great, old-school outing with clean climbing and good rock, but you had better like wide climbing. This was one of the best old-school lines I've yet done in Sedona, but seems to go surprisingly neglected. With an easy approach, two quality pitches, some crazy positions, and a great summit, it deserves more attention.

Although south-facing, this is mostly shaded since it's tucked right up against the South Mesa. It is fully shaded in the afternoon.

Pitch 1--Belay for the first pitch in the comfortable notch between the tower and the South Mesa. Start up splitter fingers in a slight flare, which widen quickly to good, steep hands for a ways, with a couple big reaches past wider pods. The hero hands end beneath a 15' OW, smooth-walled and in a flare. Burl up this with arm-bars, heel-toeing, and whatever else works...this is another good example of just how hard 5.9 from the 70's can be! Take care with some loose debris in the back of the OW. At the top of the OW, burrow horizontally through a wild hole into the middle of the tower for the "room" belay. Belay off of hand/finger gear. (5.9++, 80')

Pitch 2--Tiptoe toward the light (north, toward the Middle Mesa and the Mace) out a sloping ledge to the outermost edge of the imposing chimney above. Take care not to trundle yourself off the ledge into the bottomless chimney below! Breath deep and start wriggling up the incredible chimney above, which maintains a fairly constant width for the whole pitch, and offers micro-features for the lower 1/2 and some larger pockets and edges up high. The guidebook says this is runout for the first 30', but I didn't see any cracks anywhere in the chimney, and only found one marginal TCU about 2/3 of the way up. It's secure chimney work, but approach this pitch as essentially a solo. Belay off of slung shrubs and a small juniper on the summit. (5.8 R/X, 100')

The summit anchor is about 20' below the actual summit, above the south face. It is two 3/8" Bandito bolts that are decent, but a new bolt would be nice. We swapped out the crusty tat with some rope. Chains would be a great addition!

We rapped with two ropes to the ground in about 150', as we were unsure of the setup. However, there is another anchor (two newer vintage bolts with tat) about 40' below the summit anchor and under a big bulge. I think you could swing into this anchor, and then get to the ground with single 70m rope (60m might work too?). Bring extra tat or chains.

(1X).4-.75 (2X) 1,2 (1X) 3,6 C4 Camalots, slings. 1 70m rope. Bring another #2 if you want to sew it up, and another #6 if you really don't like bumping cams up OWs.