Harmonica Dome

Harmonica Dome is known for the very cool Harmonica Arch that sits near the top of the dome, and the "Organ Pipe" tower. The Arch seems to be occasionally visited during peak season, with an established trail to the summit. As a climber, you'll have this place to yourself.

Harmonia Dome is an impressive 400’ granite dome with an impressively clean southwest face, lined with smooth water grooves reminiscent of Big Rock Candy Mountain, and streaked with 2 perfect crystal filled and pocked lined dikes, one horizontal, and one nearly vertical, making a giant + sign meeting in a bullseye in the middle of the face. These two dikes comprise the most unique and best climbing on the formation via “A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines”. Directly below the bullseye on the SW face there is no reasonable climbing access. One old lead bolt and 2 anchor bolts at the top of a slab indicate an early direct attempt. The climbing above the 2 bolt-anchor is either dawn-wall-hard, or 5.impossible.

Fifty yards right of center, past a huge roof, is an incredible 165’ overhanging dihedral, topping out on a large perched boulder. I am not the first to attempt this dihedral crack either. About 40’ up, there is an old tricam. I have no idea if that was a bail piece or if the whole crack has been climbed. On my on-sight attempt of that crack I didn’t even make it to the tricam before the painfully sharp jams, mossy crack, bush navigation, and suspect rock deterred me. I bailed from a sling around an unnerving chockstone. I later top-roped the entire crack, and while it certainly “goes”, the sketch factor is far too high for my taste. It’s unfortunate because it’s a striking line, but I don’t think the dangers justify it as a quality climb.

With the direct start and the dihedral out of the picture, an alternate way to access ”Madman” follows a much tamer (and still great!) crack a hundred feet to the right of the dihedral, surmounting the perched boulder on the right. Then an unintuitive traverse & down climb grants access to the improbable dike traverse, the bullseye, and the vertical dike. I believe that an old Crusher route “Joey’s Traverse”, shares the first pitch and a half with “Madman”, before splitting to the right.

Climbing History on Harmonica Dome

Per Steve Crusher Bartlett: “I think we called that formation Arch Dome. My wife Fran and I actually climbed a long water streak that's on the far right of [the beta] pic. We began somewhere under the large tree. There's an overlap that angles up and left. Our route followed a deep water streak that ascends just left of the far left end of this overlap. Pretty easy climbing, super high quality, maybe 5.9-ish but very runout (called it "Joey's Nervous"). I have a note that I free-soloed a 5.7 called "Mysterious Today" on the same formation. I have no idea where Mysterious Today is located, nor anything about it. I was poor, I have few photos from back then. And few notes.

I was  about done at this time with first ascents in the South Platte and began pivoting to spending more time with desert trips. Strappo did a lot more exploring around there. Strappo and Noel Childs did a route on Arch Dome they called Crimson Minge. This was very high quality. They may well have climbed, or attempted, other things there.”

Season

Spring and Fall provide good moderate temps. A cooler summer day with an early start (and no rain!!!) can also be reasonable. (it gets sun starting around 11-12 in July).