Thor’s Hammer Explore…
Deb and I went up to Thor’s Hammer to explore a possible scramble route to the summit of the Hammer. This rock is on private land, but hikers are allowed to hike past the gate and hike the 3 miles up the road. Once we got close to the rock, we thrashed or way up the slope to the base of the rock, where we thought we might be able to scramble up a large relief and scramble to the top. Unfortunately, there is a 15’ wall that we didn’t feel comfortable free climbing, so we moved on. We skirted the SE side looking for another way, but found nothing. Before turning around, we walked out along a short ridge for a break, then hiked back to the truck.
Nice short exploratory hike.
The gate we parked at and the road we walk for about 3 miles…
Cool looking rock along the way…
The Holiday Farm fire from 2020, burned it right down to bedrock in places…
Getting closer to Thor’s Hammer…
The south side of Thor’s Hammer. The large relief in the rock is where we were hoping to scramble…
…but a closer look revealed a 15′ tall wall to get above to enter the relief. We went up to it and found no way to get up the 15′ wall.
The SE side of Thor’s Hammer.
A small community of low income tiny homes. Interesting concept. Located down along Hwy 126…
A zoomed in, distant view of Wolf Rock…
Might have to explore that little pinnacle…
Can you find the Night Hawk? Very good camouflage.
Our track…
Very cool spot! I’ve climbed this rock a couple times, it turns out the easiest way is on the west side. Theres a steep, debris-filled chute running up to a notch just below the summit. A bit sketchy in places, you wouldn’t want to fall but the footing was good enough when I did it. Another time we climbed straight up the columns on the southwest face on 5th class terrain with poor protection. Wouldn’t recommend unless you had a wire brush for the dirt and maybe some pitons for the flared cracks. The gully above the 15 foot wall you mentioned is easy to navigate, so maybe if someone set up a fixed line there it would be the best approach to the summit. Old beer cans near the top indicate someone has found a way up there in the past, probably via the chute I climbed.
Also, the cool looking rock formation down towards the gate has been recently named and climbed:
https://www.mountainproject.com/area/121900884/the-sundial
There’s another rock just over the ridge from it called the Moondial, which has quite a few steep, difficult sport routes.
Thanks for sharing!