In my opinion the next area we went to was probably one of the neatest areas that I have been to yet, Washington Pass offers alpine climbing nearly right off the highway. Most of the climbs are only an hour or two's worth of hiking before being at huge granite spires and peaks.
After just finishing Prusik peak, we wanted to take a rest day but also didn't just want to sit in the van the whole day. With that, we consulted the owners of the local gear shop on reccomendations for a more low key day. They directed us to an 11 pitch sport route. A 11 pitch sport climb is literally unheard of! Most sport routes go to maybe 4 or 5 pitches at most. We thought this was exactly what we were up to for the day and threw a small pack together and headed out on our way. The trail is straight forward and goes up a well used climbers path but somehow we managed to hike atleast an hour in the wrong direstion scrambling and navigating sloppy death scree. Once we realized our mistake a small amount of crankiness and annoyance set in as we slogged our way back to the trail in nearly 90 degree weather. Two hours after leaveing the car we had arrived at the climb, drowned ourselves in water and ate a snack before heading up. I was very very excited as we were going to be switching lead pitches and I'd be starting us out. A few pitches up we realized that we were dangerously low on water (literally only brought 1.5 liters for the day..yikes) and still had many, many hours till we finished. The climbing over all was very fun and on pretty decent rock. It was only mildly inconvenient that to start each pitch you had to coil, move, and then unflake the rope as it was a fairly uncontinious face. Moderating the water was excruciatingly hard as the sun pierced into us and took any moisture that our bodies were latching on to. It was a sigh of relief to reach the top but as I said once before, hitting the top only means that you are halfway done. Some 13 rapells later our tired feet hit the ground and we no longer had the rope put away before we scurried to the van where hydration awaited us! The day was a blast but maybe not what we had in mind to rest our already tired bodies. Tomorow would be some much appreciated R&R.
Today is certainly going to purely consist of hanging out. We parked at the store in Mazama and unloaded our bikes. We figured it would be a pleasant 3 mile bike ride up to the swimming hole on the river. We loaded up our packs with beer and pop-tarts and eneded up spending a good portion of the day soaking in the rays by the river.
Now that we had let our bodies recouperate, we were rockin and antsy to get some of the climbing in that we came to Washington Pass to do. Like said before, it's a real treat to be able to start at the trailhead and within 1.5-2 hours be at the base of the route. Our objective today was the Beckey Route on Liberty Bell (which is the first spire on the right in the picture below). This route has about 4 pitches going at around 5.7. Upon reaching the route thre ws a guided party directly in front of us and they clearly were going no where quickly. We decided not to wait behind them but instead would by-pass them off to the right. Sam started the lead up the face and kept going and going and going. He climbed so far that I ended up breaking down the belay mid climb and partially climbing up the route while still belaying him. Certainly not a suggested method of safety ;) It was now my turn to climb and I followed up a beautiful corner system of immaculate rock. Once I met up with Sam we pulled out the guide book to see what by-pass route we ended up climbing. Turns out we somehow managed to turn a 3 pitch 5.8 climb into one single pitch. That meant we only had one more push to put us on the summit block. I willingly offered to lead this one and was excited because according to the topo I'd be taking us through the crux of the route. Psch, some crux that was! ...my sad little pitch could really hardly be counted as anything as the entire pitch was sand walking with one slabby move up a 5.7 face. (felt more like 5.4ish) We stayed on the summit, watched some lady bugs and then made a few rapells before hitting the ground.
Directly behind us was Concord Tower, and when I say "directly", I mean it took about 10 seconds to walk over to our next route. HECK YA! This was the North face with I think 4 pitches at either 5.7 or 5.8. We actually did our intended route and in just about an hour we were on top of another peak. Now all we had to do was come down and hike an easy few miles to the car! My goodness we could get used to this kind of luxory. Tonight we'd have some pasta and a bottle of wine that has been travelling with us for the endurance of the trip.
With a new day for climbing we have chosen what will the hardest route based solely on grade that we've done thus far on the trip. Again, in about 2 hours we were racked and starting up the first pitch. I think this climb supposedly had about 12ish pitches full of a variety of climbing. You climb everything from "wavy" handcracks, teneous slabs, and weird off-width bear hug type moves. This climb is definitley rated as one of my top favorites that we have done. This tower is called south early winter spire.
We contemplated taking a rest day but figured we were on a roll and the weather was fantastic so there was no reason to stop now. Our next peak object, Cutthroat, is a little more of an inloved process in both the approach and route finding. The peak is not linked with the previous towers we climbed but instead stands proudly by itself. The approach is all on a climbers trail that starts by going through a jungle swamp land and then pushes you up through steep alpine meadows and talus slopes. Even though we started at 6am, we didn't exactly have our speedy pants on as we were feeling a bit lethargic from the days prior. Once we found our route is was a beautiful climb that meandered up the face. I'd say this route could almost be as good as others we've done except that there was quite a bit of very very slippery lichen and shrubbery growing off the sides. The descent was actually relatively fun...but only kinda. Descents are the devil to me and i become stressed beyond belief everythime we come down from a peak. There is something about going downhill that my body absolutely detests. Literally if you were to watch me come off a mountain you'd naturally figure that I had extremely tall stilletos on and decided to wear them rock climbing.
Sam took some great pictures of the descent:
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| What the descent actually looks like |
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| How i feel the descent is |
It ended up being a long day and from car to car it took us about 12 hours to finish. Exhausted yet very content, we were now ready to move our home on wheels up into the Northern Cascades.
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