The Tree house of Horror!

So I meant to blog about this last weekend but I didn't get around to it until now. I did a new multi-pitch free-climb on Mt.Johnson in Zion N.P., "The Tree House of Horror", with one of my buddies Joe French. Joe and a couple other locals put the route up this winter but we were the first to do the route in one single push from the ground to the top. The climb is 12 pitches long and it took us about 6 hours to get to the top of the route. It has all the "spice" you'd expect to find on a Zion route, some chimney/off-width, some bands of "sugar stone", and a couple of bolted slab pitches. Joe and company did a great job establishing this route. It's got 2 to 3 bolts at every belay and you can rap the route with a single 60 meter rope. (We simul-rapped the route and were on the ground in about 25 minutes.) The approach is a bit of a grueller...it's about an hour hike up some pretty steep terrain, but worth it in my opinion.
Joe gave me permission to post a copy of the topo he made up...

We didn't have a good camera with us but Joe got a few "O.K." shots with the camera on his phone.

This is me leading through the off-width on pitch 5. The chimney section is above that and it was this pitch that worked me the most. *whew*

This is me belaying Joe up to the top of pitch 10. This was the first of two bolted slab pitches. This one was pretty fun but the way it "Zig-Zags" around made the rope drag pretty bad.

This is me and Joe on the top. The view is spectacular, with "Tree's Ranch" just below us and a 600 foot water fall in the distance, that I'm sure not very many people get to see.