New Cordy route on Mt Dione, Tantalus range

[BK]

I'd like to recommend paul Cordy's new route on the southwest pillar of Mt Dione. It provides ten pitches of killer crack climbing and cool knife edge pinacle traversing topping out on a primo summit. Like much of the western aspects of Tantalus and Dione, the stone quality is excellent granite littered with crisp edges and generally free of lichen and choss. A topo exists in the Haberl hut logbook and I'm sure Paul would provide beta to anyone interested, but generally the route finding is easy - follow the straight up crack system on sustained 5.10 cracks with bolted ring stations.

There are now about a half dozen routes and variations on the south and west aspect of dione and right around the corner is the west face of Tantalus, a rather under appreciated 700 meter alpine wall

well worth the hike or 200 bucks of heli time

[dberdinka]

That wall always looked amazing. How's what's access to the base of the face?

[Brendan]

Drilling Dionysus

[TravisMcC]

What an amazing route! I was able to climb this over the weekend and it is fantastic. There are no bad sections on the entire route and the three middle pitches are stellar; each offering something different and memorable. We topped out on the pinnacle (adds one pitch) and then rappelled the route (instead of continuing to the summit).

In my opinion, a #4 is optional. There are definitely spots, but I never used it.

Here is a shot of the start, which is approx 60m down from the top of the gulley. The route begins in the crack on the right side of the photo and trends slightly left. There are anchors waiting just out of this shot.