North Ridge

I was surprised this route wasn’t already on here, so I figured I’d add what I know and anyone else can keep improving it. We used a combination of Zion free and clean and this summitpost writeup to aid in finding the route:

https://www.summitpost.org/watchman-north-ridge-iv-5-10/1000569

We parked inside the park at the visitor center and took a gully most of the way towards the Watchman. There’s a faint trail that goes up towards the base then gets clearer. Hiked around until we spotted some reasonable scrambling, then kept going, for about 400 vertical feet, until we felt like roping up.

We roped up for a longish crack a little below what a summitpost writeup described as the first pitch. For that pitch (5.10), you crawl into a little chimney and work your way over or around a small roof, then up the rest of the chimney. There are a lot of trees or gear belay options.

Numbering pitches is somewhat tricky on this one. Some things the party may feel comfortable scrambling up. I found the rock pretty loose and the route less than obvious enough that we stayed roped up most of the time. Pitch 2(?) was some 5.7 and a bit mossier rock that finishes up a small roof move. From here or soon on you can see the next real pitch (5.9), and the only bolt we came across. Some facy moves take you right around the arete. Then up.

From here I ran the rope way right and up a grassy gully to a tree belay, where we could see the next pitch (5.7), we set up the next belay here and went up some loose rock and took the left-most crack to a boulder with some slings around it (one sling tore apart when we pulled on it). We had some route-finding problems here. The next belay is down some and left along the ridge, until you see a long pretty curved corner crack (5.9+). Finger width widens to hand width up higher.

From here my description will get worse, as it turned more into mountaineering again. The next couple pitches we had to keep rather short because of rope drag. We would go until that got too annoying then use the nearest tree, all the while aiming for the headwall. We ran into a lot of loose rock and some interesting moves. At one point we reached a bolt/sling we rapped off to get back farther right and closer to on-route. Eventually we came to the headwall pitch. It is very loose and looks pretty difficult to protect, The Zion free and Clean guidebook appears to suggest you take the left chimney, which they say goes at 5.10A0. The summitpost writeup suggests you go right up the corner chimney by taking an airy step into the chimney farthest right.

From the top, it is possible to rap down the route, if you’re willing to rap off trees, or to traverse the ridge and rap down the hanging canyon to the east.

First pitch according to Summitpost begins here. We roped up at a 10-20 ft offwidth crack just below. To get to this point there is roughly 400 ft of scrambling from the base of the Watchman, marked well in one of the Area figures.

Full rack is recommended. Some slings have been left that can be used as anchors or rapped off but be careful what you trust. We found one bolt on the entire route. Used one 60m rope.