Intro
Touchstone Wall is one of Zion's classic routes. It is a beautiful, sunny line. Its straight-in splitters attract climbers of all abilities. The first two pitches go at C1 (with a bolt ladder on Pitch 1), Pitch 3 is 5.11, and the remainder of the route trends 5.8–5.10. In general, Touchstone gets easier—and the pitches go faster—the higher you get.
My friend from Washington, Chris Cox, was in town, and we’d planned to team up for a stretch. We’d started our trip in Red Rocks and then decided to head to Zion, where sunny splitters abounded and the crowds didn’t. Our first route of the trip was Touchstone Wall. Chris had climbed it a decade prior but was happy to repeat it.
I led the first two aid pitches, which I always find fun. Each took about an hour (aid isn't fast). The sun hit us at the top of Pitch 2, just before 10 a.m. Chris took over for Pitches 3 to 6: Pitch 3 is the technical crux, with a 5.11 fingers-to-hands splitter. The rest of his block was full of enjoyable 5.8–5.10c crack climbing. We climbed in fix-and-follow style, so block leading worked well. I took the final block—Pitches 7 to 9—to the top. This included a 5.10b fist section, a 5.8 slot (the topo called it “short and no fun,” but I would remove the “no”), a wild piton-bolted 5.7 face, and then an easy romp to the summit. We enjoyed the 360° view. The route took us 6 and a half hours to climb, at a casual pace.
The rappels were quick—less than an hour—and uneventful aside from briefly catching the rope in a tree and getting a knot stuck in a crack, both easily resolved.
It was a spectacular day in Zion: T-shirts, sunshine, and not another party on the route—or seemingly anywhere. The park roads were open to cars (the shuttle doesn’t typically run in December), so we had a steady parade of tourists below, some of whom spotted us and enjoyed watching the ascent.
This page includes a route overlay, time stats, a rack description, and pitch-by-pitch photos from the day. What a day it was!
