Parent Dana's Arch
Miles 2.2
Elevation gain 1140
YDS rating 5.9
Pitches 3

With the possible exception of “The back road”, this is the easiest route to the top of the Upper Town Wall.

Gear

  • 70m rope + 20-30′ of additional pull cord
  • Nuts and cams to wide-fist size. For the second pitch, it may help to have doubles in the hand size, or at least doubles of large nuts.
    • singles from Tips-#4 Camalot will give you plenty of options. Doubles in the handsizes (.75-#3) are recommended for the 45-meter second pitch, on which I was glad to have brought a #4 camalot.
    • I was very happy to have a #4 and doubles in most sizes
    • Singles tips to 4 camalot, doubles .5-2, blue-red TCU. We used every piece on pitch 2.

Approach

To reach the base, go further left along the wall from the start to Back road and Jungle fun. Just after pulling up the hand line, trend right to a tree. Start with a rightward traverse to the corner-crack.

Right after the hand line look right and slightly behind you and you’ll see the short trail up to the start. We walked right past it the first time.

P1: ~5.8+

Start with a rightward traverse to a flake and then jam a hand-fist crack to a large ledge with a big fir tree.
(A more challenging first pitch is “The death of Abraham Lincoln by mounties” (5.11c), which goes up the steep face and corner just right of the regular first pitch. )

P2: ~5.9

Start up a pair of thin face cracks, but soon traverse left into the long corner system. The crux is either the thin crack or the traverse into the corner. This pitch is about 150 feet and ends at a bolted belay.

P3-P4 (better variation): 5.9

Traverse out right on the exposed ramp about 30′ (takes gear). Belay at the bolted anchor. Then do a fantastic, steep 5.9 arete, protected by bolts. Ends at a large platform-overlook spot with a bolted anchor.

You can leave your rack on the P2 anchors if you do the variation traverse, it’s entirely bolted.

P3 (original): ~5.7

A much shorter pitch that goes up past a bolt to the top of the wall. Some root-grabbing at the end.

Descent

For the descent, the easiest is to rap the route. If you do the better variation finish, you can walk over to the other anchor to rap.

Bring 20-30 off pull cord and extend the rappel if you want to rap from the top of P2 to P1 to skip the tree station and to avoid bringing a full second rope.