Cuba Libre

This route is, until now, undocumented in MP and in all guidebooks. Climb an ugly slot and loose

blocks, and make a rotten traverse left, to the prominent crack. Climb the crack (wide and rotten at first, narrowing to almost fingers, and widening to hands). I often had to stop and scrape a lot of crusty lichen out of the crack, with one hand, while painfully jamming with the other. This led me to believe that no one had previously climbed it. I belayed at the top of the crack on a pillar/pedestal. Btw this is the same crack that the adjacent route, Bay of Pigs, ascends. I think that BoP was first climbed in the late ‘80s.

The second pitch was much easier. It continued up a short dihedral, then traversed east, across the south side, to the east-facing, low-angled slab, following that to the summit. We scrambled down east, then south.

No bolts and pins were anywhere on the rock. We didn’t name the route, nor did we report it to the “authorities.”  We didn’t name Cuban Tower, either — I don’t see any resemblance to Cuba (where I have climbed).

Start below the obvious chimney/slot on the right side of the face.

A standard rack through a #4, or bigger, although the biggest piece on my usual 1983 rack was the original #4 Friend, which is similar in size to a #3.5 Camalot.