Southeast Ridge

To my knowledge this was the first hard route on the towers. There are several possible variations as at any point you can go left, right, or center. For more details see Dylan Miller's movie youtube.com/watch?v=80mQVBk… and Blake Herrington's blog post blakeclimbs.blogspot.com/20…. The pitches after the first 2 are a bit of a blur so sorry if they're light on details or if the grades are off.

P1: walk from snow to ridge where possible, We accessed the orange corner via an angled steep crack (crux of route for us), climb gray Rock on right side of corner. We climbed the left crack. 5.10. Dylan Miller says the right crack goes at 5.9 and more early season snow avoids the lower crux.P2. Traverse right from top of gray Pillar. Climb poorly protected insecure slabby slopey Rock past small roof. 5.9. Other parties have managed to stay on the ridge for P2 and 3, which looks like looks high quality climbing.P3 climb up and left gaining ridge. 5.7 P4 continue up ridge 5.7 P5 continue up ridge finish with finger crack on right side of ridge. Could also follow an obvious crack straight up 5.9 P6 climb hand crack left of rap anchor and continue up ridge 5.9 P7 continue up ridge 5.8P8 traverse on right side of ridge to avoid steep looking bulge. Regain ridge. 5.8 Staying on the ridge should still be no harder than 5.10 but the hour was getting late for us so we took the easiest looking route.P9 continue up ridge, finish with slabby move after right trending crack. 5.9P10 traverse right, climb chimney to ridge, simul to summit 5.5. There is an alternate 5.9/5.10 finish to the right. Descent: Rap SE ridge.  

We did single rope raps due to the ledgy nature of the ridge until the last 4 for a total of 17 rappels. About half way down there is a rappel with a piton and two nuts equalized with a blue cord.  Here, you rappel skiers left to a ledge, then walk around the ledge back to the ridge.  15m Rappel slung block. 15 m When you come to the bolted rappel station, use two ropes and rappel down and slightly skiers right to a slung boulder. 45m Rappel down the corner. Rope stretcher, 60m To the skiers left, on the ledge, there is a very good wire placed.  We backed this up with a .75 cam for the heavier person then cleaned it and the second rappelled with just the nut. 50m  to ledge where we got off the snow. OR Pull ropes after ~35m of rapping and walk the ledge skiers right to find a slung horn.  Final Rappel 40m gets you to the flat snow bench at base of towers.

Standard rack