Hand Crack and Singletrack: Tippin the Bottle

View from top of Bottleneck Peak

I've been slacking on my blogs post lately, mostly due to my own lack of desire to write anything, but also because I'm really not sure there is much of an audience who reads this thing anyway. Oh well, I write this stuff more for my own memories than anything.

In May of this year I invited my good friend Jake Buckner down to climb a relatively unknown, but still classic, desert tower route, "Tippin the Bottle" out on Bottleneck Peak in the San Rafael Swell. I'm not sure exactly why it isn't more well known, as compared to mega-routes in Castle Valley or Canyonlands. It certainly is not a beginner route by any means. And the lack of fixed anchors may scare a few folks away. But there is no question the climbing is excellent and rock quality is almost exclusively clean and crisp sandstone, with the occasional loose choss that accompanies any desert tower. I can't imagine this get climbed any more than 10 times a year. The lack of comments on MP certainly suggest even less.

Bottleneck Peak is located just a mile or two south of the San Rafael Bridge Campground, making it an easy jumping point from camp. Jake and I arrived Friday night with Jake having a much more painful drive than I out of SLC due to Memorial Day traffic. I did a nice 45 min run while waiting for him. We a very lively discussion around the campfire about vaccines and their safety, Jake being a very pro-vaccine minded individual, me playing devils advocate and arguing against the notion that vaccines are the greatest thing to happen to mankind.

Not hard to find the start

Saturday we woke up and got a somewhat early start. The route is north facing, so we weren't very worried about the heat. The approach is probably one of the more awful desert tower ones I've done, with no trail on very loose and steep terrain. It also involved navigating some scary 4th/5th class terrain, which would have been trivial without a heavy backpack and chacos. We chose the most direct route on the way up, which we didn't use on the way down. Both were unpleasant. Nevertheless, we arrived at the base of the route intact about an hour after departure.

Jake was up front about his lack of climbing fitness due to his recent infatuation with weight lifting, which is actually the antithesis of climbing shape. He was kind and allowed me the privilege of leading every pitch, something I seem to be gifted often. His goal was to try and only french free half the route.

Tippin the Bottle is a 3 pitch 5.11+. Pitch one is a gem, a long one that encompasses a whole smattering of good quality desert fare. A sandy handcrack leads to a flared roof which requires stemming, then pulling over into a beautiful thin hands crack. Transitioning from stemming to jamming was the crux of the pitch. The "Banana splitter" leads up and right, narrowing to fingers and then easier terrain followed by a short lieback roof and some generic cracks to a decent belay stance in an alcove. I managed to get this one clean, which I was happy about.

Pulling the roof into the Banana Splitter. Best get your yoga pants on

Jake following up the last part of Pitch 1

Pitch 2 is the apparent crux, with an "overhanging finger crack". The pitch starts off with a weird flared upside down V chimney. It appears you have chimney it from below, but liebacking is the ticket. The overhanging liebacking finger crack appeared next, which turned out tamer than expected due to a bomber, lie-down ledge in the middle. I unfortunately botched the section after the ledge requiring a brief hang as I wasn't stoked on my gear and the ledge below didn't look ideal to hit. A low angle handcrack brought me to a nice belay ledge.

Looking down from the no hands rest ledge midway up Pitch 2. Jake is out of view to the right

Last part of pitch 2

Pitch 3 was by far the scariest and hardest move on the climb, which was unexpected after the supposed crux of pitch 2. Right off the belay, maybe 15 feet up, is a blank corner where the only gear is a small red c3 cam, with a very difficult hand-foot match move followed by a lunge to a decent edge. Blowing this move and your gear would land you on the belay ledge with broken ankles or worse. I tried once or twice but couldn't commit to the move and C0'd it. My ankles are more important than freeing that move. Solid 5.12 in my opinion. The rest of the pitch was fun, involving another weird chimney birthing section, then heads up climbing with an unprotectable but easy wide flake section and a somewhat scary loose OW section of rock that leads to the final anchor.

Blank corner with birth chimney above

Lieback wide flake on pitch 3

OW face

We scrambled to the top and enjoyed the view. On most climbs, once at the top the stress is mostly over, though I hate rappelling in general. On Bottleneck, the rap anchors(down a different route) seem to be the scariest part of the climb. The first ascentionist used what appears to be shelving sheet metal for his anchors, not the most inspiring. The 3-4 "bolts" at every pitch have either one extremely fragile looking piece of equalized webbing, or a rat's nest. Clearly this awesome route deserves some quality anchors to match its climbing.