Touchstone Wall

Touchstone Wall is a Navajo sandstone big wall on the Cerberus gendarme, part of the southwest ridge of Observation Point in Zion National Park, facing Angels Landing across the canyon. The route runs 820 feet over 9 pitches at Grade V, originally climbed as an aid line at C2 with free climbing around 5.10a/b on most pitches, and it has since been freed in full at 5.13b. It requires a bivy permit for overnight ascents, with ledges at pitch 5 and the summit, and it became a proving ground for the idea that Zion's soft sandstone should be climbed clean rather than pounded with pitons.

History

Ron Olevsky made the first ascent solo in 1977, placing fixed gear deliberately so the route could be protected without repeated hammering, a choice made to preserve the rock. Zion pioneer Jeff Lowe encouraged Olevsky to look after the wall, and Lowe himself returned in later years to work on freeing his own earlier Zion aid routes as part of the same clean climbing push. Mike Anderson and Rob Pizem completed the first free ascent of Touchstone Wall in 2006, the last of Zion's three classic big walls, alongside Moonlight Buttress and Spaceshot, to go free. Olevsky and Lowe marked the line's 30th anniversary together in December 2006.

On film

Jeff Lowe's Clean Wall: Touchstone Wall (2022) is built around this route and the clean climbing ethic it came to represent in Zion's desert big-wall scene. The film frames Touchstone Wall as a proving ground for low-impact, removable protection on soft sandstone, with Jeff Lowe as its central figure.