Tollhouse Rock- Elephant Walk

Tollhouse Rock- Elephant Walk
Rock Climbing– California
Total Time: 3:30
Distance: 1.1 miles
Elevation Gain: 650′
Crux: 5.7
Pitches: 6
Protection: Doubles to BD #3, nuts, quickdraws, 70m rope
Companions: Holly
Trailhead: Burrough Mountain Rd, no services

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Due to the birth of our beautiful daughter, Holly and I had not been on a multipitch climb together in over a year when we climbed the Tree Route in the Needles, finding the logistics of rock climbing with an infant lended itself more to cragging than multipitch routes. But with Grandma babysitting for the day and temperatures finally dropping at lower elevations, we decided to head to Tollhouse Rock for a half day of climbing. On our first and only visit we climbed the classic Tollhouse Traverse, but there were a number of other fine moderates that we had yet to explore. I decided on Elephant Walk 5.7, 6 pitches with a classic finger/ hand crack first pitch and moderate slab climbing the rest of the route. We dropped Avery off at my mother-in-laws and drove 45 minutes to Tollhouse Rock, heading up the steep dirt road and parking at the start of the approach slabs.

I remember the trail from our first visit, and we had little trouble navigating down the climbers trail, skirting the base through the forest and reaching the start of Elephant Walk about 100′ past the obvious start of Tollhouse Traverse. The first pitch climbs a 30′ finger crack before merging with a different finger crack Beginner’s Delight 5.8 from the right, before continuing another 60-70′ of glorious handcrack to the anchor.

The start may have been one of the harder moves on the pitch, with a large leaning flake on the left preventing me from climbing the crack dead on and pushing me a bit onto the slabs out right. The crack ate small cams and I sewed up the harder finger crack section before reaching the more mellow hand crack above.

The pitch reminded me quite a bit of the crack pitches on the Tree Route in the Needles, and I was almost sad to reach the anchors, knowing the rest of the climb would be face and slab. As Holly started up the pitch, I was surprised to spot a car crashed at the base of Storm Warning Wall and a crew of four workers assessing it. The crash looked fresh, and I hoped it was not an accident from the Tollhouse Faceoff Climbers Festival the weekend before.

When Holly reached the anchors, we turned our attention to the next pitch. Although only rated 5.6, it’s fairly run out, with 30′ of spacing between some of the bolts. The first two bolts were obvious as I started up from the anchor, and needed to climb quite a bit higher to find the third bolt down and to the left of a small rooflet, passing it on the left. The bolt spacing was definitely in a traditional style and as the slab became more monotonous, the bolts became harder and harder to spot in the sea of granite. I used the occasional chalk marked holds to guide the way, trending up and slightly to the left to eventually find the anchors. Although technically slab, there were enough features on the face to keep the climbing easy and enjoyable, but the difficulties would increase on pitch 3. An obvious bolt line continued up from the anchor- this was actually the third pitch of Shining Path 10b, a much harder line than we were climbing. Instead, Elephant Walk traverses out far right, passing two bolts before following a thin left facing seam to harder slab above. I started across from the belay and moved up to the seam, finding placement for a small cam near the top before reaching the bolt line.

Although the bolt spacing higher on the pitch was closer together, the climbing was mentally more challenging as a leader, with fewer edges and subtle features and more pure friction climbing to the anchors. This semi-hanging belay was just below the traversing pitch of Tollhouse Traverse, with the crux corner just up and to the left. I brought Holly up to the belay, and knowing her distaste for semihanging belays, we reflaked the rope quickly and I started up.

The first protection was crossing over the seam and Tollhouse Traverse with a subsequent bolt a bit higher up. Similar to the top of the third pitch, the slab climbing was a bit less featured, and I again relied on friction to climb the slab right of the prominent dihedral up to the two bolt belay. From this point I had a few options. I could cut left over to the anchors for the third pitch of Tollhouse Traverse and we could do the easy exit pitch off, or I could continue for two more pitches of easy slab climbing. As this would be another hanging belay, I knew I didn’t want to stay at these anchors, and opted to continue up the slab pitches, having not climbed them before. Although the topo showed three bolts, I only found one for all of pitch 5, reaching another two bolt, semi-hanging belay. I did not have enough rope to combine the last pitch, only rated 5.0 but again with a single bolt.

I brought up Holly and quickly started up the last bit of slab to finish the climb in a collection of boulders below the summit. We unroped and took a short break here before packing up our gear for the hike out.

We folllowed the climbers trail up and over the summit, reaching the car in about 10 minutes. The six pitches of climbing took us less than 3 hours, giving us enough time to grab a post climb drink before picking Avery back up from Grandma’s.