Christopher Fisher and Jason Hardrath simul-climbed it for a little protection - someone like Travis Soares or Nathan Longhurst will probably solo this, despite how sandy it is, smashing our time in the process - for a simul-climb it's a solid time though 🔥 you gonna be running and gunning to best this or take it sub-hour. Photos and videos on Jason's Strava
Rad route, cool position, good views. Other than the sand, it is a bit like blasting up around on the flatirons...other than the sand...but perhaps that is as "Flatirons-esque" as Zion gets. Short but worth it.
We rehearsed the route once before the effort and left our bags with the ropes at the base of the route - thus, self-supported.
we did our research and took our theoretical times to beat for this route from mountain project for the rock route "Led by Sheep":
We knew we wanted to beat Mike Brown [and partner's] claimed time on the route of "we go to the summit in 20 minutes! FKT? anyone? Simul-rapped down with (2) 70's in 40 minutes and 3 raps."
As well as Kory Kowallis' soloing claim of "It took about 15 minutes to approach the route, 20 minutes to climb and 20 to rap. I decided to go light and use a pull cord instead of a 2nd rope. Seemed like a good way to go (although the hike is relatively quick to the base another rope wouldn’t be bad to carry in a pack, just more drag up the route). Fun easy solo."
This meant we felt we wanted to do the approach in under 15min, route in under 20min, and the rappel in under 20 minutes to feel good about establishing this FKT.
Splits:
Tunnel to base of route >13 min
base of route to top of route <19min
top of route to true summit back to top of route >9min
rappel to base of route >17min
run back to tunnel >5min
Total Elapsed: 1:03:01
"we think someone will eventually go sub-40min RT on this." - Jason and Chris
In our opinion, there should never be an "ascent only" FKT on this but here is a Strava Segment
A Strava Segment that is just a little short of being "tunnel - tunnel" [ie non-official time] can be used to help research if anyone beats us who logs on Strava