
Crossing the wilderness boundary. Dark Tower seen center. Peak 2874 right, Peak 2773 just right of Dark Tower.

Approaching Dark Tower. We headed to its base.

Class 3/4 move on a small headwall.

Wrapping around on a bench to the south side of Dark Tower.

Class 3 along the way.

Slickrock funnel.

Class 4 top of the funnel.

View down at the crux.

Class 2 past the crux.

Class 3/4 excellent section to gain the summit.

Great cracks on a flat face.

Summit of Dark Tower. Peak 2773 center, Peak 2874 right. Our next goal is to reach the little saddle just to the left of Peak 2874.

We descended Dark Tower. This is looking back up at the Class 3, somewhat exposed bit from its base.

Onward, Courthouse Rock seen on the right.

Ascending the slope ahead to the saddle seen left of center.

View back toward Dark Tower.

Approaching the saddle.

Past the saddle, we dropped around to the opposite side of the crest.

View back toward the saddle, seen left of center.

I'll describe the Class 3 route first before the Class 5. The bench faded away and became a tricky set of ribs and ledges. Keep traversing, keeping the going Class 3, granted there's a drop-off on the left. You can likely avoid all of this if you drop down a few hundred feet below instead.

The cliffs cleared up a bit and I dropped down into the major drainage seen center.

Ascending the pretty, slickrock drainage to the notch seen center.

View back down through the drainage.

Notch seen center at the head of this amphitheater-like feature.

Ascending to the notch (ignore the fact that everyone's coming down, I took this on our descent).

View down at the Class 3 up to the notch.

Close-up.

Nearing the top of the Class 3 ascent.

From the notch, view down. The notch spit us onto a bench.

View back along the bench. It hugs the summit cliff before a low Class 3 set of moves takes us up.

A view at an intense-looking knife edge everyone seemed too excited to try, but we couldn't find a way to it.

Summit of Peak 2874, view west. Courthouse Rock seen far right.

View east. Eagletail Mountain HP seen top center. Dark Tower seen left. Our next summit, Peak 2773 seen right of center.

You can skip the next few photos if you don't care about the Class 5 route we took. From the bench, we located the major crack seen top left.

Class 4 to enter the crack, crumbly.

Low Class 5 stemming for a long time, very fun.

View down the first leg of the chimney stem.

More scrambling and wider chimney above.

The chimney spit us onto a wide ledge. Karson seen starting up a tough flared crack.

The flared crack.

More Class 3/4 all the way up, very fun.

View down as we near the summit using the tougher Class 5 route.

Anyway, back to the route. We continued along the crest on this interestingly-formed rock to a lump along the ridge.

View back toward Peak 2874.

Peak 2773 seen ahead.

Impressive cliffs along the way.

Some light Class 3 as we descend from the lump to the base of Peak 2773.

Ascending to Peak 2773.

View back along the ridgeline, Peak 2874 top center.

Peak 2773 ahead.

Yes, Matt. We do, in fact, go up!

Class 4 protruding rock providing a short traverse.

Karson puling up the Class 4 move.

Excellent Class 3 from here.

View back down.

Wider shot back along the ridge.

Sustained Class 3.

Summit of Peak 2773, view back toward Peak 2874.

Summit of Peak 2773, view back toward Peak 2874.

Summit of Peak 2773, view east.

View back toward Peak 2773's east ridge.

Descending an interesting volcanic slope. Dark Tower seen left.

Descending the volcanic slope, avoiding a major dryfall.

We entered the drainage seen below and headed back through the desert.

Passing Dark Tower on the way. You can see the south face we scrambled up pretty clearly here.
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