Success on a Guided Liberty Crack w/ NCMG

Annie feeling the love from the spires at the top of Liberty Crack on a perfect Washington Pass day.

The third time must be the charm! I’ve gotten up the route just fine both times before (see last year’s Liberty Crack: Then & Now) but just a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to guide the climb for North Cascades Mountain Guides with a super strong guest from Pennsylvania and it couldn’t have gone more smoothly. We had a great two days out there, fixing lines the first and blasting off the second. We made it car to car in about twelve hours and knocked off a classic: Liberty Crack (V 5.10 C2), 12 pitches, Liberty Bell Spire, Washington Pass, WA. Classic indeed.

A complete photoset of the adventure is up here.

Finally!

My buddy Mike Pond and I finally got around to climbing it. “It” still doesn’t have a name, but it’s a new route – sort of. We climbed a version of it last year, then we went back and scrubbed and cleaned and bolted and made what we thought would be a pretty kick-ass version of it, and then it started raining. And then a year when by, and then just last week we actually got to get out there and climb the thing, and as it turns out, it does kick ass. The timing was pretty kick-ass too, as we climbed on a Wednesday and on Saturday Mike took off to Ohio to start grad school. I wouldn’t have wanted to wait another year.

In case you’re ever around Washington Pass and want to go climb it, you can check out more photos of the wall and get an idea of where it is here, and here’s the beta:

Wright / Pond, 5.11a/b, 4 pitches

Rack: Double rack to 3″, emphasis on smaller cams and wires. RPs useful.

Approach: Turn off Hwy 20 app. 4.5 miles east of Washington Pass following signs for the Cutthroat Creek Trail. Drive about a mile down the road to a trailhead parking with a bathroom on the left side of the road. Walk up through the woods (no trail) towards the wall, gaining elevation quickly before traversing leftwards in open forest and on slabby benches. You should reach a shoulder near the base of the wall’s right-hand side within an hour to an hour and a half.

Climb: P1 5.11a/b, 55m – Begin by climbing the obvious left-facing arch depicted in the photo above. At its terminus, head directly up gaining a shallow, right-facing corner. Climb this past one bolt to a strenuous pinch at an overlap. Gain the pinch and move left to a stance (crux) below a handsome, right-facing corner to the right of a large roof. Climb left around a flake to gain the corner and climb the corner crack to a bolted belay at a ledge with a small tree. A bold lead.

P2 5.10c/d, 50m – Leave the belay to the left and head up a large flake towards a bolt on a small overlap. Clip the bolt and step right into a clean open book. Stemming and thin fingers lead through the open book and past another bolt to gain a stance. Step right and follow the line of six bolts up the face (crux) on small edges and pockets. Step left past the last bolt to a clean, shallow, right-facing corner. Follow the corner to another bolted belay.

P3 5.10a, 50m – Head up the obvious right-facing corner (mostly fingers) until it closes out. Work the corner and face past one bolt until a small roof. Pull left past the roof into left-facing corner crack. Climb the crack up and left before another crack trends slightly rightward. Jam fingers and hands to its finish and climb a short, easy slab up and right to a treed ledge and another bolted belay at the base of a left facing corner/chimney.

P4 5.8, 45m – Climb the blocky corner/chimney up past a tree until you gain a low-angled slab. Head left across the slab to a wide hand and fist crack hidden in a left-facing corner. Exit the corner up and right on blocky but easy ground to low-angled ledges. A tree with rappel slings is on the left.

Descent: Rap the route in four double-rope rappels.

It’s Been a Long Three Months

Up high on North Sister with Middle and South behind.

For anyone who cares (does anyone care?) I know it’s been a while. It feels like it’s been a while. Three months almost to the day. It’s been a busy summer. Where to start? Well, first I came back from Alaska. I left in brilliant weather and came back to June-uary. After Denali (we summitted, woo-hoo! – it was cold and your pack is heavy but man is it beautiful [pics here]), I remember sitting outside at the AMS offices and drifting off during a conversation with my girlfriend, just staring at a fuzzy yellow bee crawling on a new green leaf and just being taken aback by the audacity of the natural world after three weeks on a glacier populated by only humans in their synthetic skins, living in their heads, and the occasional lost bird or oblivious raven. Sitting in my shorts and bare feet, I was enamored with how warm and verdant the world outside of rock and ice could be and my sense of wonder lasted just about until I got off the plane in Portland to a cold rain falling through the gloomy halflight of a northwestern pre-dawn.

South Side climber expressions typical of the 2010 season. Shock. Awe. Confusion.

I had hoped, and half expected, to walk back into the loving arms of an Oregon summer, but it wasn’t to be. As anyone who climbed in the Northwest in June knows, it was one of the snowiest on record, a month that saw twelve foot snows up high on Rainier, avalanche conditions on a hair-trigger all over the region, frostbite and war stories on a scale more suited to the Himalaya than the Cascades, and more turned-around trips than ever. Often on Mt. Hood we’ll ride the snowcat to the top of the ski resort and climb from there, and I had always heard stories of groups that stepped out of the cat only to step back in, but I’d never done it myself until this year, and when it happened, to me only once and to others many times, there was no question that it was the thing to do. We had new guides who had been working on the mountain for weeks without having seen it emerge from the clouds once. We had one guide whose high point after six or seven trips was a few hundred feet above the cat track. Foolishly, I got welcomed into the summer by having my Alaskan softshell kit soaked through within five minutes of stepping off the cat on my first trip up the South Side. By the time we were hiking back down, the pools of water that had accumulated in my boots felt like they were starting to freeze, as were the soaking wet layers that were starting to crunch as we trudged down the ski hill in a whiteout. This general trend persisted through the month of June. Our intern, out from sunny Colorado and not used to living in a world of rime ice and storm, broke down and quit near the end of the month after having his soul crushed by a month of sleeping in the truck while the elements tried their best to convince him he was in a cold, wet and windy version of hell.

Naime tries to remain an upbeat rime sculpture on another South Side morning.

By July it decided to be reasonable and climbs actually went, albeit at a reduced rate owing to the abundance of said rime ice and lingering instabilities from the snowy months before. We had a great trip into Middle and North sister, although weather and snow conditions prevented us from actually summitting either of them. I got to do a bit of recreational rock climbing with some friends. We climbed a chossy tour-de-force at Smith called European Vacation. It’s seven pitches and goes at 5.11R, and despite being composed of awful rock, it’s still a pretty fun outing. Here TMG guide and buddy Marc Ripperger sends 5.11 on the worst rock I’ve ever seen anybody climb hard on. July went on on its normal course and at the end of the month I bailed on Oregon.

Vacationing in Chossland.

With an AMGA Alpine Guide Exam coming up in September, I decided my time would be best spent running around the North Cascades and I relocated to a cabin in Mazama. With the Unibomber Shack no more (see last year’s Mazama experience), I’ve got my own cabin this year and while it’s not necessarily quite as charming, it does have perks like running water, a shower, three rooms and electricity, which are charming enough. Which brings us pretty much to now. Or at least a month ago. I feel like that’s an adequate recap, especially since I doubt anyone really cares. Onward to the North Cascading!

A Successful Denali Summit and on to The Cascades

With Alaska season over for me, it’s time to get back to the Cascades. It’s a shame it was more summery when I left Talkeetna than it is here in Bend though…