Gardeners Wall 3740′ via Hanging Gardens
McDowell Mountains
Total Time: 6:30
Distance: 3.0
Elevation Gain: 1000′
Crux: 5.6 (both pitches)
Trailhead: Toms Thumb Trailhead, no water
Companions: Brian Joseph, Colin Pickles
Gardeners Wall in the McDowell Mountains is widely considered one of the best moderate leads in the range. Rated 5.6, the two pitch route follows a wandering crack up the center of the large granite face, with a cozy hanging intermediate belay. In fact, some argue that it may very well be the best 5.6 in the state, with ‘What’s My Line’ in the Cochise Stronghold another contender. While I had scrambled up the nontechnical east side of Gardeners Wall the year before, I had yet to climb the famous line, mostly from a lack of confidence in my ability to lead it. But towards the end of a successful winter lead season that included O’Neill Butte, Praying Monk, a few rounds up Tom’s Thumb, Coyote Rock and Pinnacle Peak, it was time to tick off another classic. Brian and Colin were willing partners on a Friday morning before my night shift, and we met at my house and headed to the McDowells and Tom’s Thumb trailhead.
We set out along the familiar hike in, taking short breaks at the various signed overlooks on the way. About halfway up the long set of switchbacks heading up towards Tom’s Thumb, we reached the signed climbers use trail towards Gardeners Wall and turned right. The trail, although thin at times, was easy to follow and headed towards a deep wash, with Gardeners looming on the opposite side.
Nearing the wash, the trail drops into a field of boulders with some nice scrambling up, over and around the large rocks throughout the canyon. Through the wash, the use trail enters a deep cave, a popular campsite before the McDowells were a protected preserve.
Through the cave, it was only a bit more hiking to bring us to the base of the route. The wall was a bit intimidating from the base, but I was excited as I racked up, bringing singles of BD cams to a #4, a couple flexcams for the horizontal crack, and a set of nuts and hexes. I was leading on twin ropes, and instructed Colin who was coming up second to leave Brian’s rope clipped into the protection to prevent a pendulum in case of a fall. After tying in and doing our checks, I started up the first pitch. The first 10′ of the route is really just a class 3 ramp to get you to the leftward trending crack. Some people feel moving from this ramp into the crack is the hardest move, and the exposure is decent from the start. But the crack made protection easy and after placing my first piece, I swung out out of the shallow ramp and into the crack. I had originally planned on using my hands in the crack and finding little knobs for feet, but it wound up being easier to have my feet in the crack with either holds above or using the crack to almost lieback along. About 1/3 of the way up the first pitch the crack makes a sharp turn back to the right and I paused at a small ledge here for some quick photos before continuing on.
The upper portion of the crack heading right I found to be a little bit easier, keep both my hands and feet in the crack to psuedo-lieback up to the first set of belay bolts. I was hoping for a bit more of a ledge to fit three grown men at this intermediate belay station, but it was clear things were going to get cozy, and rope management would be key. I built a quick Magic X anchor then coiled the slack from the two ropes into slings to keep things somewhat organized.
I first brought up Colin, who seemed to make things more challenging by using the crack almost exclusively for hands and relaying on the small McDowell knobs and quartz crystals for feet. Brian came up last and the three of us were packed tightly on the small belay station.
In the interest of making things more comfortable for everyone at the belay, I reracked the gear to start the second pitch as quickly as possible up the rightward trending crack. Unfortunately the crack was about 5′ above the belay station, and I clipped a separate bolt a foot above the two bolt belay station to avoid potentially falling directly on the anchor. This was actually an excellent decision, as just when I was reaching the finger crack to place my first piece, I took a short, wimpy lead fall, more of a slow cheese grater for a couple feet. Brian had been adjusting his stance at the small belay station once I was above him, and had given me an accidental pull off the rock. It was hard to get to upset since the belaying conditions at the small stance were not ideal, and no harm done. I reclimbed back up to the finger crack and placed a tenuous nut in the shallow crack before climbing along another few feet to place a more bomber cam where it was a bit deeper.
This crack became progressively wider and deeper until it became abruptly vertical. I clipped a sketchy bolt (I think it was a Leeper hanger?) and started jamming up the crack, a bit wider then a fist at places but with plenty of holds deeper that one could use if crack climbing did not happen to be their forte (such as myself).
There was no end in the options for gear placement, and after the short slide I took advantage to zip up the entire second pitch, placing my last cam just before a thin flake on to the left of the crack just before a Palo Verde tree growing near cracks at the top. I had brought a #4 for the reported runout near the top but thought it was completely unnecessary, the last 15′ of the route being essentially class 3 to the top. I expected to find a bolt anchor to belay from at the top of the route, but finding none, I made a cordelette anchor around a huge rock past the final large boulder. After yelling ‘off belay,’ I heard ‘Uhhhhhh Chris…. do you have an extra belay device?’ I did, but it was for Colin to use, now making two rappel devices for three climbers. While there were a couple of options (I could lower one person, we could scramble off) I decided this was as good a time as any to practice my Munter hitch…
After bringing up all the slack, Colin started up the second pitch. I could luckily see him from my belay spot and coach him with some impromptu crack climb techniques for the more vertical section (foot jamming is not intuitive the first time).
He was pretty pleased topping out, and I brought Brian up to join us out of the shade and back in the warm sun for the first time since the approach in. Neither was interested in scrambling the remaining distance to the summit without a belay (there was an exposed move up from here) and working that night, I didn’t feel like we had time to basically create a third pitch of climbing. Plus I had scrambled up there previously, and it was really only about another 20′ above. Still, the views towards the south were excellent, with a nice vantage point of East End and Glass Dome.
I found the anchor about 15′ to the climbers left of the top of pitch two and after tying the ropes together with an EDT and stopper knots at the ends, Brian rappelled down first to the intermediate belay station, building us a quick anchor. Colin followed behind, and once off belay, I set up my double munter hitch rappel, setting a hitch on each rope on separate carabiners and different loops of my PAS. I added the safety of an autoblock and started down, finding if anything it was too slow between the friction of the two hitches and the autoblock. But it certainly did the trick in a pinch.
Meeting the two others at the intermediate belay for the second rappel, we untied one of the stopper knots and threaded the end through the anchor chains and began to pull the ropes. Stupidly, the other rope swung out away from us to the right as we were pulling, just out of reach to untie the second stopper knot. Using the slack we had from the other rope, I tied in and moved right a few feet to grab the other end and untie the stopper knot before we could pull the rope the rest of the way. The extra bit of excitement over, Colin then made the second rappel followed by Brian, the two looking for the dropped rappel device as I deconstructed the anchor and headed down to join them. We eventually did find it underneath a boulder in some leaves looking no worse for wear, and we packed up our gear for the hike out. The extra time spent climbing out from the belay to untie the stopper knot on the second rope and looking for the rappel device had me pressed a bit for time, and we hustled back to the Toms Thumb trail and down to the trailhead to make sure I wasn’t late for work. Despite a few small mistakes, it had been another successful day of climbing in the McDowells.
