This route climbs a beautiful feldspar line on the south face.  The first 15 feet climbs up some blocks under a very small roof.  You then step right off a ledge onto the face and begin a section of about 100 feet of climbing where the difficulty never drops below 5.7 and never above 5.8.  Very beautiful and continuous steep line with awesome positive holds almost the whole route. 

  After a short minor crux near the fourth bolt, climb left of a crack which takes a couple pieces of small gear, through the route crux.  Head right and then back left to the top from here.  Obvious line. 

  Count on some fairly long run outs on the route, sometimes 20 feet plus. 

  Also, the rock quality is not perfect on this route.  A few holds here and there are suspect.  Quality is especially a bit less near the first bolt.  We broke 2 or 3 holds on the FA.  Be careful and thoughtful of the holds you use!  Clean falls though due to steepness. 

  All bolts placed on lead using hooks.

Happiness is Whiskey

Horning Route

Happiness is Water has been lost for almost 43 years.  Touch the Sky only has it shown on the maps, without any written description.  The new Busse & Burr guide also has no information on it, only that it is supposedly 5.5.  We discovered the location of the spire on the FA of a separate route.  Upon reaching the top of the spire, there was a perfect intact glass jar register with only the two names in it from the first ascent in 1972.  Pretty wild. 

  The register says they climbed the SW cracks.  This is a gaping flaring chimney which looks crumbly and scary, with questionable gear.  I would doubt it to be 5.5 but probably not too much harder.  There looks to be a crux at the top of the chimney where it narrows down. 

  The register also said that they climbed it on a 95 degree day...probably where "Happiness is Water" came from.

This is a nice large spire, about 130 feet tall.  The south face is covered in a ton of beautiful feldspar.  When viewed from North Needle area, it sort of looks like a castle.  There are two big chimneys on the south corners.  Directly beyond it to the west is Split Dome.

Description

Location

Protection

Routes in Happiness is Water