Resignation arete

The South Buttress of the 4th tower boasts steep, well protected climbing on high quality rock. Blake Herrington wrote up a helpful route description from the 2009 first ascent on his blog: blakeclimbs.blogspot.com/20…

P1 5.7 Traverse right on low angle terrain to gain giant corner system P2 5.10 Climb through roofs up corner. P3 5.10 Continue up corner P4 5.10a Gain corner system back on route. Offwidth, Handcrack Good pitch. P5 5.8 Finish corner, go right at ledge, go back up left and gain giant ledge, belay off block below money pitch. P6 5.11- Such an awesome pitch. Low angle cracks steepen to sweeping roof with stemming and face holds to the right. Continue up corner, pulling a second roof on the way and belay on large ledge. P7 5.11+ Go right, around a big flake, then up blocky terrain to the base of headwall. Steep, beautiful finger crack. I climbed this pitch at 5.9 A0. P8 5.11 Pull a difficult leftward move off the stance and a few more non intuitive moves up to a ledge. The angle eases a bit as fun cracks continue up to the base of the finger. P9 5.9 Stem between finger and wall before going left for some unprotected 5.8 face climbing to a big ledge with a rap anchor. Ascend a low angle offwidth before reaching 5- handcracks to the summit

The above description follows the original route. We did a direct start, then a 2 zig zag pitches as the P2-3 corner and face were soaking wet P1a 5.9 a hand crack leads to a leftward traverse when the crack thins and then up the 4th class gully to cave at base of roofs. P2a 5- Go right. Mostly 3rd class slabs. Would be snow early season. P3a 5- Go back left to arete. Loose and blocky, not much for pro.

Descent. Downclimb to sling anchor below summit handcracks. Single rope rap to cord anchor midway up P9. 4 double rope raps into 4th/5th bowl. Continue rapping down to the glacier or traverse ledges to Solva Buttress rap anchors and make 2 more raps to the base of solva.

Lookers right of the big rock fin coming off the 4th tower.

Double rack