Hike Weavers Needle via West Chimney Tonto National Forest, AZ

Nov 04, 2021 — Weavers Needle is an iconic peak that dominates the Superstition Mountains of Arizona. Most hikers do a loop that wraps around it via the popular Peralta/Terrapin Loop, which I did almost 6 years ago. Today we'd be going for the summit. The peak has two buttes, the north being significantly higher. The two easiest routes seem to access the saddle of these two buttes. The standard route (loose low Class 5, from my understanding) for Weavers Needle comes in via the east chimney, and is better accessed via the Terrapin and Bluff Spring Trails. Chris and Mike wanted to do the route via the more technical west chimney rather than the standard route, which we'd get to via the Peralta Canyon Trail. Both routes merge at the saddle separating the north and south buttes of Weavers Needle, and then continue north to the summit from there. This is an extremely cool peak, one that's been on my itinerary since the day I saw it, and today I'd be taking advantage of a couple of friends with trad gear. Both Chris and Mike are capable, strong climbers/scramblers and wonderful company.

We started along the Peralta Canyon Trail, a nice walk on a well-traveled and maintained trail despite the immense midday heat up to Fremont Saddle, where the view of Weavers Needle ahead is about as photogenic as it gets. Many people turn around here, Fremont Saddle being a destination for many hikers, but we continued down the north side from Fremont Saddle and followed the trail for another couple of miles as it slowly descended. The perspective toward Weavers Needle changed significantly as we wrapped around to its west side, where it was revealed there are two summits, and we could see the chimney we'd be using the ascend. Now for getting up to it. There isn't a trail to get to the west chimney route, and the terrain seemed potentially quite brushy and riddled with rock outcroppings. We noted a cairn on the right leading away from the Peralta Canyon Trail and decided to follow it, though I'm sure leaving the trail at any point will result in a similar ascent to what we experienced. A short drop led into a minor wash, and then we started scrambling and lightly bushwhacking out of the wash. There is a major set of large pinnacles that we kept to the left of, and then a mostly pleasant and steep Class 2 slope led us up to near the chimney. A social trail materialized below the cliffs of the southern butte, and we followed it as a side-hilling traverse into the gully at the base of the technical chimney.

Happy to be in the shade created by the gully's towering walls, some Class 2/3 on slabs led to the start of the climb, where a deceptively tricky Class 3 slab led to a Class 4 move at its top. There are minimal holds and it's at an awkward angle. Past this Class 4 move, some Class 2/3 stuff led to start of the technical climb, where there were fixed bolts in place. Mike decided to freesolo the route, which I thought was wildly stupid due to the potentially chossy rock quality, but he had no incident. Chris basically freesoloed it as well since his gear placement wasn't great, reporting the majority of the climb was 5.5 PG-13, the PG-13 due to the lack of good placements. The The final bit to get into the notch at the top of the chimney and the end of the climb's technical portion had a chockstone. Climbing underneath this kept the route low Class 5, and it was a pretty fun little feature. Alternatively, there's a 5.7 loose face to the right of the chockstone. I can't understand why Chris decided to do this alternative instead of just go under the chockstone, but I'd learn later this week quite how dangerously burly he's willing to be. Anyway, I thought the climb was fun, but that's just because I didn't have to lead climb it. Thanks for getting me up the route, Chris!

Once at the notch, the real fun began, now away from the Class 5 territory with loose rock. Directly to the north from the notch was a Class 4 ten-foot headwall. Mike ascended it on the left via an exposed set of moves, while I was content to find the less-scary option on the right side. The holds were pretty solid and I didn't feel too concerned, but I did take my sweet-ass time making sure ever hold was okay. Past this there was a lot of fun Class 2/3 up small cliffs and gullies. We flew past it, giggling about how cool this peak was, and surprised at how much scrambling still remained after finishing the Class 5 chimney. The route continued to be straightforward and not at all exposed for a couple hundred vertical feet.

We then got to another headwall. The holds on this guy were incredible fins of surprisingly solid rock, Class 3. I wish every scramble was like this. The jugs were large enough to wrap your arm around. The downside was that a fall would likely mean certain death. I contemplated how I felt about pulling the moves, but the fins were excellent and we made our way up the 15 feet of exposed Class 3 into a small gully, and then pulled a final Class 3 exposed wrap-around move to escape the small gully, now about 30 feet off the deck. This lead to easy Class 2 stuff to the summit, where the sunset views were delightful.