"I was with Kevin and Ritch to climb the 40' rock tower. https://hwstock.org/devilsthumb/ . There is much confusion about this on the net, because several routes to Charleston start at the base of the tower, and people often feel that if they have taken those routes, they have climbed devil's thumb. In trad, the actual thumb is probably at least 5.8. I've added Ritch Go's picture of Kevin and me on the summit, as viewed from the south. Some folks misidentify "Devil's Thumb" as a small spire on the opposite wall: https://hwstock.org/notthumb/ . I *discommend* this as a climb. For trad, you might not find safe placements (we looked and all were in unstable fractured rock). Unless you have the arm of a pro quarterback, don't expect to throw a "normal" climbing rope over the top. The worst case (and most likely) scenario is that your rope gets stuck, and some poor idiot then tries to climb it." — hwstock • Nov 27, 2021

"What a fun day! Harlan took Ritch and I up a new route (to us) to Lee Peak. From there, we traversed over to Rocketship, then to the base of Devils Thumb, our main objective. Devils Thumb is a technical crumbly limestone tower, just off of the North Loop Trail. Every time I walk by it, I wonder what it would be like to climb this thing. Luckily, Harlan had the same idea. I will not share our technique for ascending this monolith, but I will say that it was indeed shitty rock and not easy. Once at the top, we saw no signs of anyone else ever being up there; none of us know of anyone who has ever climbed it. I guess this is the first known ascent. I left a register, we rapped down & made our way back to the saddle between Rocketship and Lee Peak. Harlan's plan was to reascend Lee Peak, so we could descend the same route we came up. Ritch and I didn't feel like going up any more, so we agreed to all try to descend from where we were over loose scree, hoping not to cliff out. We found a route that worked, working around cliffs until we intersected the ridge we came up. From there, we followed the paths/trails back to the cars." — Kevin • Oct 10, 2021