Mayflower Traverse (aka, The Rock Fountain) from Atlantic to Fletcher (5.1–5.4), Sept. 2019

On Sept. 28, 2019, Katie Larson and I climbed Atlantic Peak, traversed all five Mayflower needles (gendarmes, towers), climbed Fletcher, and descended the unpleasant gully west of Fletcher back to the car. Many climbers do the route unroped, but for us we had traditional fifth-class pitches as follows: Tower 2: 5.1; Tower 3: 5.4 and then rappel to the south; Tower 5: 5.1, 5.3, 5.3 (short). One can call all these pitches fourth class, in the sense that the crux moves of each are short and solid. But my ratings above are…my ratings. This route is considered to be dangerous because of loose rock. But this quote from Brandon Chalk (https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=12736) is spot on: “Dave Cooper in his Colorado Scrambles book calls it arguably the most dangerous of all the routes in his book. We found out that Cooper says this for good reason yet we both had a lot of fun. The intense scrambling, routefinding, and technical rock climbing at over 13,000 feet is just way too much fun.”