Moonlight Buttress

One of the most striking lines anywhere in Zion National Park, maybe even North America, the splitter cracks in pristine (and fairly solid!) sandstone on the jutting buttress near Angel's Landing have seen generations of climbers in every imaginable style: from the pitons of the 1971 first ascent, the clean climbing revolution, the drama of the 1992 first free ascent by Peter Croft and Johnny Woodward and most notably, the April-first-but-not-a-prank 2008 free solo ascent by a then unknown young talent, Alex Honnold.

There is more to the buttress and its adjacent wall, though, with semi-classics Sheer Lunacy and Lunar Ecstasy (the first has been freed, the second hasn't), the all-free 2019 line Moonshadow on the right side, and the probably unrepeated March-Forrest chimney.

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Route List

1: Sheer Lunacy, 5.9 C2/5.13, Olevsky, 1992/Barlach, Heinrich
2: Looney Toons, 5.10 A2+, Brown, Folkerson, 1999
3: Lunar Ecstasy, 5.10 C2, Platt, Quinn, 1992
4: Moonlight Buttress (Aid), 5.9 C1, Lowe, Weiss, 1971
5: Dark Side of the Moon, 5.10 A3+, Folkerson, Slhock, 1999
6: Moonlight Buttress (Free), 5.12d, Croft, Woodward, 1992
7: Moonshadow, 5.11b, Collins, Sickler, 2019
8: March-Forrest Chimney, 5.9 A2, March, Forrest, 1978

Sources

• “Zion Climbing, Free and Clean,” Bryan Bird, Supertopo, 2009

• “Desert Rock: Rock Climbs in the National Parks,”Eric Bjørnstad, Chockstone Press, 1996

• “Selected Climbs in the Desert Southwest

• Colorado & Utah,” Cameron M. Burns, The Mountaineers, 1999

• “Rock Climbing Utah,” Stewart Green, Falcon, 1998

• Mountain Project

• John Middendorf

• Bill Wright

• Jeremy Collins

• Connor Baty

Updates

Nov 21, 2023: First version published.

July 8, 2024: Added two missing routes, Dark Side of the Moon and Looney Toons, thanks to Connor Baty.

Mar 9, 2026: Minor graphic update