Mountain Squirrel

I stare at the perfect six sided snowflake, a white asterisk against the black fabric on my left glove. It’s kind of surprising when real life actually resembles the cartoon representation.

The rope is moving slowly but steadily. My partner, Sketchy, hasn’t placed a single piece of gear yet, and I’ve just fed the middle marks on our 60 meter through my belay device. The Northeast buttress of Chair Peak doesn’t match the gear-catalog representation of ice climbing: no sun glittering on thick, glassy ice, no plunging frozen waterfalls, no place to put ice screws. So far it’s been one mixed pitch of ice-cemented rocks, two of steep snow with occasional rocks and bushes. One of the steep snow pitches happened to have about 15 feet of ice that could be recognized as a frozen waterfall. We’re now on another snow pitch, which should be the last (supposedly, not that we’ve got a route description with is).

The climbing has felt easy to me, but I haven’t been leading. The protection is what’s sparse, and Sketchy’s a little stressed out, judging by the grumbling and ranting coming from above.

The snow is dust over a styrofoam-like crust over sugar. The crust holds together adequately, but occasionally a large chunk breaks off and dissolves into a bucket load of sugar while it slides down the slope. A chunk comes down following the rope line and I duck left behind the medium sized rock that’s both anchor and shelter. The leader of a party of 3 behind us has climbed past me and is now enthusiastically cursing and digging around in the snow for his own anchor. I hear another large chunk of styrofoam snow sliding down the slope from his position and duck to the right around the rock.

Feed rope out. Duck behind rock. Knock snow off my boots. Repeat.

The rope stops, with just a few feet left. My turn to follow. The biggest challenge has been trying to reach the gear loops on my harness around my puffy down jacket and the waistbelt of my pack. On this pitch I don’t have to worry about that. The single piece of protection is a girth hitched sling that I don’t even have to loosen to pull over its rock, so it doesn’t take long to reach the belay. Actually, I reach Sketchy sitting down in the snow, running the rope around a ridge as the belay.

We’re done with the technical climbing, and the summit is just a scramble away (supposedly, not that we can see it). The last time I climbed Chair it was early summer, and we sunbathed on the summit block while admiring the view. Today, no sun, no views, and, so close to solstice, no daylight, so no summit.

The first rap station is barely visible below, a rainbow of frozen webbing around a very gnarled small tree. Not the best anchor ever, but it’s good enough to be our ticket down the gully-slash-wind-tunnel to a hopefully uneventful walk out in the dark.

Descending

• Chair Peak, Northeast Buttress

In the Pacific NW, winter isn’t a season, it’s an elevation, so this is not the first time this year that we’ve been snowed on, but it is the first time we’ve gone specifically to wallow in it.

Snow!!!

Commonwealth Basin is a good spot for early season snowshoeing. No permit is required for parking (if you park in the first ski area parking lot off of exit 52), avalanche danger is minimal if you stay off the peaks, and you can kind of randomly wander around without worrying too much about getting lost.

more pictures by Denny

We pulled in to the campground after dark on Saturday night and ended up next to a friendly group of college students from Bellingham who were equipped with a case of Bud, a stack of pallets (including the sign from the Quincy Veterinary Clinic), and a few musical instruments (some of which musical instrumentation was emitting sounds well into the night).

Sam was thinking of joining us on Sunday, but he decided not to because the weather forecast had a small chance of rain in it. Chris from Cle Elum was thinking of coming too, but he said something about being stuck up in a tree and having to put his truck back together. I thought we’d be on our own for the day, but while we were taking care of business involving shovels and blue bags at the mesa top, Liz sent me a text saying they had pulled in to the parking lot and were heading to the Sunshine Wall. So we sat down on the sign and waited for them (and about 30 other people also heading to Sunshine Wall). Soon we saw Liz, Shayna, Rebecca, and Micheal in the train of people coming over the mesa top, carrying a jug of orange juice and a bag of cookies.

When we got to the Sunshine Wall it was complete chaos as expected. Welcome to the only dry rock within 200 miles of Seattle! All the moderates like Party in Your Pants and Vantage Point were of course taken. If I didn’t want to try Stems and Seeds again we would have left the Sunshine Wall for somewhere quieter. Steel Grill was open so we started with that and Sunshine Buttress.

Sunshine Wall is Full

By that time we were done with those two routes, the chaos had migrated to our area. Steel Grill has the only chains for that whole set of routes so there was a bit of logistical fiddling with people descending. My anchor draws ended up on another route (backed up with a hot pink vintage 1985 gear sling (??)), people were leading to anchors already used for topropes, ropes were left up for descending, etc. Fortunately everyone was paying attention so nobody dropped anything or rappelled on top of a leader, and I think everyone ended up with the right gear and got to climb what they wanted to.

Surprisingly or not, there were three of us that wanted to climb Stems and Seeds, but the other two guys kindly let me have it while they did the other 11s in the area (Bob’s Your Uncle and Mix it Up). It starts on a pillar just big enough for two people and a rope, so we started with a debate over whether the gray TCU was 4kN or 6kN (we’re both wrong, it’s 5kN). I backed it up with the smallest nut I have anyway. The gear was there (even if it was tiny and required some fiddling with nuts and fumbling of TCU’s), and it was nice to already know what to bring from TR’ing it 2 weeks ago. It was definitely nice to be able to place the .75, 1, and 2 camalots that I’d stashed on the back of my harness for the roof and wider crack at the top. The only, uh, hitch was the overhand knot that appeared in the middle of the rope. Fortunately it appeared at the only point in the whole route that had a giant ledge to stand and wait on.

Mike on TR on Stems and Seeds (doing it the right way)

Sketchy was looking for offwidth, and he found a nicely unpleasant one on Stroken the Chicken, but unfortunately it’s surrounded by the rest of the route, which features ladder-like jugs in a comfortable corner. He still got to place the big cams and big bros, but I got to ignore the wide stuff and 5.6 my way up. The other side of the offwidth crack is called Shady Chimney, and looks like it might be more of what he was looking for.

I wanted to try Mix It Up (5.11, begins on 4 bolts then goes into a gear protected crack), but Sketchy pointed out that the sun was in the process of setting so we started packing up. Short days and crowds aren’t really conducive to getting a lot of climbing in. We did get to see Chris on the way back through Cle Elum, and hear about his tree- and truck-related adventures…

• Sunshine Wall, Steel Grill, 5.9 trad (lead)
• Sunshine Wall, Sunshine Buttress, 5.10a sport (TR) at first wasn’t sure if I’ve done this before, but I think I’ve done every 9/10a on the Sunshine Wall
• Sunshine Wall, Stems and Seeds, 5.11b trad (lead) which would make 11b my hardest redpoint grade, but I imagine doing it in the right side crack instead of stemming actually makes it easier…
• Sunshine Wall, Stroken the Chicken 5.6 (follow) aka the wrong side of Shady Chimney

Kate sent out an email entitled “Costumed Climbing”. Emails flew, but by the time the weekend came around, the cast of characters was Denny, Liz, Rebecca, Zak, Kate, Joanna, Charles, and two dogs, Catfish and Lucy.

It was already after dark when Joanna and I got to the “Bivouac Area” (aka really nice campsite with heated bathrooms and running water). The rest of the group came in even later. Supposedly there was some cursing involved when someone lost track of their tent partner in the dark then gave up and slept in the truck, but I was fast asleep under a cozy juniper tree and did not hear a thing. Surprisingly we all found each other at sunrise as planned, and pulled out all of our coffee making apparatus. You don’t know how much of a coffee addict you are until you and your friends have covered a picnic table with things related to making coffee.

There was only one party on Morning Glory, so Denny and I threw our rope under Zebra/Zion while the rest of the group started setting up on 5 Gallon Buckets and friends. The easiest way to start Zebra/Zion is to start near 5 Gallon Buckets and traverse diagonally through all three of the bucket climbs. A group was already on one of them, so we decided to try the next easiest start, Gumby. As a 10b, it was a pretty stiff start for the day, but it is well protected (especially stick clipping the first bolt) and has its share of buckety fun. I did the first pitch and stopped at the hanging belay, which meant that Denny got the next one, the actual 10a crux of Z/Z. Denny gave it a good try, but after a few falls on an extremely well-placed yellow nut we switched ends of the rope and I finished the pitch. He took the 3rd pitch containing the 5.8 runout slab traverse into the unknown, and I got the 4 star 5.9 flake to the top. The book claims it’s the best 5.9 at Smith and I wouldn’t argue with that. It reminded me of Diedre at Squamish, even finishing up a water groove (but since it is not Squamish the water groove was not full of water, moss, mud, pine needles, etc).

Denny's annotated picture of Zebra/Zion, click through to see the notes

While we were messing around up there it had actually gotten seriously warm at the base, so when we got down (the descent through Cocaine Gully is not as bad as the book makes it sound) there was some sitting in the shade while the group migrated further down the wall. Some favorites like Cinnamon Slab, the Rabbit 7s (Rabbit Stew, Lycopodophyta, and Bunny Face), and some pebble pinching sport routes were done. I didn’t really need to do those since I’d done most of them 2 weeks before, so I just sat around and belayed for a bit, put up Wedding Day, loitered and belayed a bit more, watched people on Heinous Cling and Darkness at Noon (it’s really interesting to see the difference between people leading 12 who are pushing their limits and people leading 12 as if it’s a walk in the park), looked for pumpkins…

Fixed Pumpkin

I was thinking of trying either Moonshine Dihedral or Karate Crack, but by the time Moonshine was free (I couldn’t figure out what exactly was going on on Karate, but I guessed that it would probably take a while), it was getting close to sunset and my rope was still up on Wedding Day so I wasn’t sure I’d have time to wait for my rope, lead Moonshine, and have someone else clean it before it got dark. The guys on Heinous Cling had the rope up and were also in loitering mode so they (probably mostly jokingly) offered us a TR. Kate didn’t want it but I thought I might as well give it a try, since ropes up on 12s don’t grow on rocks. Surprisingly it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be (ie. it wasn’t completely impossible). I got to the top, and only fell a few times. It would be a different experience on lead, though. The wall is vertical-to-slightly-overhanging enough to make the falls clean, but the bolts are a little far apart.

The Smith experience is more towards the civilized side of climbing trips, not that there’s anything wrong with that. We got the usual beautiful sunset walk out to the car, dinner at the Terrebonne Depot, more drinking and chocolate at the picnic area, and another night sleeping under the full moon and the juniper tree.

Moon over Smith Rocks

• Morning Glory, Gumby/Zebra/Zion, 5.10b trad, 4p (lead 1, 2, 4) see Denny’s photo description of the route
• Cinnamon Slab, Easy Reader 5.6 (TR) Rebecca is just getting in to leading (not that you can tell) so she lead this easy bolted route
• Dihedrals, Wedding Day 5.10b sport (lead) used the magic stick to protect the first few moves and take most of the excitement out of it, but it’s still a quality sustained route
• Dihedrals, Heinous Cling 5.12a (TR) project for next spring??

Since it was Halloween, a few of us had costumes. I had an improvised shiny cape, Rebecca brought a pterodactyl costume, and Kate had a monkey hat! We could hardly leave without at least checking if the traffic wasn’t too bad on Monkey Face…

The only other groups in the campground had apparently taken advantage of their extra daylight savings hour to get some more sleep, and were firing up their stoves as we were cleaning up. Things were looking good…

After an only slightly miserable hike up Misery Ridge, we popped over to the other side and saw nobody on the Monkey. Denny had generously volunteered to lead the A0 bolt ladder, so he and Rebecca started up the shorter Pioneer Route while the rest of us went around to the West Face Variation.

I led first with Liz following me with a pack full of water and bananas (just like we did on Banana Peel at the beginning of the summer), and Kate and Zak paired up behind us (Charles and Joanna had to stay with their dogs on single pitch stuff). We did the variation start, an arching traversing crack rated 5.8 on the right, since it looked cleaner and prettier than the blocky 5.7 ramp on the left. The first two pitches to Bohn Street were a lot of fun, varied climbing, enough protection, not too bad rope drag.

The last short pitch out of the monkey’s mouth has a Reputation. It’s only 5.7, but the book calls it “Panic Point” and claims it’s the most exposed 5.7 in America. The first bolt can be clipped while sitting down in the mouth and still anchored in, so I reached over and did that. When I peeked around the corner I could see a second bolt continuing the traverse. It seemed a little tricky for a 5.7 — a little longer, more traversing, and the bolts didn’t seem quite as close together as Denny had described it to me, but it was definitely within the realm of an old school 5.7. The only odd thing was that the rock was a little loose and dirty for a super popular moderate trade route. When I popped out on the top anchor, I started chatting with Rebecca and Denny (who I seemed to have woken up from a nap) while stacking rope to bring Liz up.

Me: Hey, you guys on the top? Where’s that scramble you were talking about?
Denny: Huh?
Me: I thought you said there’s a scramble around a boulder and up an arete to get to the top?
Denny: Huh? You didn’t stop at the boulder on the nose?
Me: Nose?

After seeing a second bolt to follow I didn’t even think to look up, but apparently the real 5.7 route goes straight up, so I did some sort of variation. Oops. Kate awarded me the monkey hat in honor (?) of making all three of them do the variation (which I later found out is actually named “Monkey Off My Back”, and the Select book declares that it “deserves more traffic”).

Kate enjoying a banana on top of Monkey Face (picture by Denny)

Partly because of the extra excitement on the last pitch and partly because we wanted to get back to Seattle at a reasonable hour (and partly because we had set the clocks back and so the sun was going to set at an unreasonably early hour), we weren’t going to do too much more climbing that afternoon, so there was plenty of time for monkey dancing and eating bananas on the broad monkey head summit. I thing we gave the hikers on Misery Ridge a pretty good show.

• Monkey Face, West Face Variation, 5.8 trad + A0 4p (lead 1, 2, 4) not only were we climbing on a rock that really looks like a monkey, every pitch is a lot of fun (especially the more exposed 5.8 variation on the last one).

More pictures: Denny (including the monkey dance video), Charles, and Liz.

One thing about climbing in the Northwest is that by the time you get a little bored with one climbing area, the weather changes and you have to go somewhere else. October usually means it’s time for Vantage: the pizza oven effect of the south facing Sunshine Wall is very welcome when it’s 45F in late October.

Sunshine Wall (photo from a trip 2 years ago)

This fall, Sketchy is going to school on weekdays and working Friday evening and Saturday during the day, so our trips have to be a little shorter than they were in the summer. Vantage is not a bad day trip, even the early morning drive towards the sun rising over the Cascades is more pleasant than tedious.

We headed to the Sunshine Wall to start at one of Sketchy’s favorite climbs, Steel Grill. At which point he informed me that it was my lead. Hm. I wouldn’t usually pick a 5.9 trad route as the very first climb of the day, sin. Upon further consideration, I decided to go for it. I’ve done it before on toprope, what could go wrong? And I was too lazy to go look for another route.

Steel Grill also shares an anchor with Bob’s Your Uncle. Its 11a rating is courtesy of the last 10 feet of thin finger locks/lieback/stemming nonsense, so it’s definitely worth doing while Steel Grill is set up. If you fall off near the top on TR you pendulum over and have to finish on Steel Grill anyway.

While I was cleaning the anchor, a group of guys rappelled down the neighboring Stems and Seeds. Turns out they were intending to set up on Sinsimellia, which is almost a number grade easier. All these columns do kind of look the same. The first two guys just thugged up stemming the whole way. The third used a bit more technique, but he still had to switch sides between the two cracks. They kindly gave me a chance to try it (probably hoping it would be entertaining to watch the short girl climb the must-be-this-tall stemming problem). When I stepped up to the start I couldn’t even reach between the two cracks with my hands. No stemming for me. The right side crack definitely looked doable as a finger crack with even a few face holds for feet, at least as far up as I could see, but I expected to get shut down eventually. To my surprise, the thin crack went, the whole way. All the way to the surprise easy hand crack at the top.

I’ve had a goal on my 43 Things list for a while to lead a 5.11. It’s just happened that this summer I haven’t really been in a group situation where I felt I had the time to try something that I might not get easily and quickly. But today was it — Sketchy was not really feeling the climbing, and we weren’t about to go home after driving two and a half hours (and one difference between Vantage, and, say, Leavenworth, is that there is not a Bavarian-themed distraction ten minutes away). I had the captive attention of my favorite belayer, and his favorite easy 5.11, Weep Holes on a Sill, just down the trail. It’s short, bolted, and there’s only one part that’s actually 11a (which I figured out when I tried it 4 or 5 times in the spring). Somehow I actually got it clean on my first try leading it this time (but then messed it up on TR when I did it a second time). So that was that.

We did two more routes on the lower columns. I would have wanted to stay longer, but Sketchy was kind of grumpy about climbing, and getting bored belaying, and good coffee and Mexican food in Cle Elum was calling us (along with the sun creeping behind the columns). I was pretty happy to be able to lead two 11s and TR two other ones, since I usually think of myself as more of a 9/10a climber (of course this is Vantage…).

• Sunshine Wall, Steel Grill, 5.9 trad (lead) listed as an “offwidth” but it’s really a regular sized crack with a few wide sections,
• Sunshine Wall, Bob’s Your Uncle 5.11a trad (TR) it starts out easier than Steel Grill, then it’s not.
• Sunshine Wall, Stems and Seeds 5.11b trad (TR) did the “and Seeds” variation (no stemming). The 5.7ish perfect hand crack at the top was a nice surprise.
• Riverview Park, Weep Holes on a Sill, 5.11a sport (lead) my first 5.11 redpoint! (I tried it on TR this spring)
• Riverview Park, Camazonia, 5.10b sport+ (lead)
• Riverview Park, The Creation of Tranquility, 5.11a sport (lead) my first 5.11 onsight!

One of the members of WCN, Mary, lives in Redmond, OR, so it’s traditional for a big group of us to descend on her house for a climbing weekend.

The weekend started inauspiciously with my 5 person carpool group shrinking to just me during the week before the trip, and I couldn’t make other arrangements before the 10AM Friday traffic window, so I set out by myself. As usual, the torrential downpour in Tacoma yielded to sunny skies as I got closer to Central Oregon (70 degrees according to the thermometer at Government Camp). I was the only one to arrive during the day on Friday, so the original plan of getting a few lazy afternoon pitches in was bagged in favor of helping Mary bake up a storm (when I arrived there were 2 kinds of bread, chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate cake with frosting, all from scratch).

People started arriving later that afternoon and into the middle of the night, so by Saturday morning, we had a pretty good sized but not overwhelmingly large group: Mary, myself, Clare, Dawn, and Shannon. After a luxurious breakfast including freshly baked scones and muffins, (the campground at Smith Rock is nice, but it can’t compare to sleeping on a comfy pullout couch and having breakfast made by a retired professional chef and baker) it was finally time to hit the rock! Apparently a weather forecast of 40% chance of rain in Bend means at least 60% chance of ridiculously perfect weather — it was sunny, cool enough that you could actually climb in the sun without melting, AND warm enough to not freeze while belaying or standing around.

Nice Day!

Even better, the forecast seemed to have scared off the crowds. We spend the whole day in the usually packed Dihedrals, and only had to share with one group that spent the day repeatedly mock leading Bunny Face, a nice couple from Colorado that asked to use the stick clip and let us share their rope, and some guys grunting on some 5.12s that none of us would be able to touch anyway. On paper that looks like a crowd, but that’s actually really quiet for a Saturday at Smith. I’ve done most of these routes before, but the style of climbing at Smith is so different from the stuff I usually do closer to home, so it’s always a treat.

Dawn and Mary

• Dihedrals, Lycopodophyta, 5.7 trad (lead) pretty straightforward
• Dihedrals, Rabbit Stew, 5.7 trad (lead) almost the same as Lycopodophyta
• Dihedrals, Helium Woman, 5.9 sport (lead) slippery pebble crux at the 2nd bolt, then easier
• Dihedrals, Captain Xenolith, 5.10a sport (lead) almost identical to Helium Woman (see a theme here?)
• Dihedrals, Wedding Day, 5.10b sport (TR) best route of the day: pockets, arete, a bit of cracks. I wish I’d lead it
• Dihedrals, Bookworm P1, 5.7 trad (lead) The top half takes big gear. Fortunately you can substitute a single bogus small cam placement in an creaky flake if all the big cams are in the bottom half of the route. Since I am short the crux was reaching the anchors from the belay ledge.

If Saturday was for the familiar, Sunday was for the new. Genevieve and Brenna had showed up Saturday night, so we had a slightly different group configuration. We had another delicious breakfast so there was no chance of being first on the wall. Everyone else had apparently got the news about the weather; when we got there, we literally saw a rope on every route 5.10 or below on the front side. Mary suggested that we go back across the bridge to somewhere I’d never climbed before: Rope de Dope, the little cube that sits across the river from Morning Glory. It’s almost all sport routes, and it’s on big textured gas pockets, so it’s very different from the pebble-embedded stuff on the main wall. There’s also actual picnic tables in the belay area, and stairs to walk up to the anchors, very civilized.

• Rope De Dope, How Low Can You Go?, 5.6 sport (lead) just to get something easy up to start with
• Rope De Dope, Low Blow, 5.10b sport (lead) close bolts, plentiful jugs, kind of like an Exit 38 .10, except with sharp gas pockets instead of incuts. Genevieve’s first 10b
• Rope De Dope, Float Like A Butterfly, 5.10b sport (lead) I’m not sure why this one got 4 stars and Low Blow got one star in the gudebook, since they seemed pretty much the same to me. I’m actually not sure about the names of the routes since there are more bolted lines than there are routes listed in the book.

More pictures from Genevieve.

Travis was kind of hobbling along on a twisted ankle related to jumping up to bridges (yep, not off, up to) so we didn’t want to go too far from the road. Fortunately Leavenworth has quite a few drive through crags. Our first stop was X/Y. It’s got some easy cracks, and we could set up a nice little nest for the belayers, since it was about 60F cooler than it was a month ago.

Cozy Belay

Sketchy and I set up ropes on the X and the Y so Cara could do some mock leading.

Cara

There was still plenty of time in the day when we had exhausted the possibilities of both the X and the Y. There was talk of going to town early, but it was not hard to convince Sketchy to visit his favorite climb, Classic Crack.

Classic Crack

I managed to redpoint it this time, after never being able to do it in any way remotely resembling clean on toprope. Turns out it is a lot easier on lead when the rope isn’t stuffed in the crack trying to knock my rattly fist jams out. And the gear is quite solid (even if I did stuff the blue and silver DMM cam where the plain blue one would have gone — Sketchy and my merged rack is a little confusing color-wise around the 3 inch size).

After everyone else got a run on it, it was time to head to town for Oktoberfest. We didn’t even mess with the backhoe that someone had left the keys in.

This was the first time I’ve been in Leavenworth during actual Oktoberfest. The usual state of Leavenworth on a sunny weekend is a low level Oktoberfest, so it was extra extra crazy this time. There was even a line with a bouncer letting people in two at a time at the hat store. We managed to squeeze in to a table at the Munchen Haus with 19 other Oktoberfesters and a large hanging planter.

Cara and Travis

Due to the crowds (and the special smaller 12 oz plastic cups brought out for the occasion) it was fairly difficult to obtain quantities of beer, so we actually woke up at a reasonable hour and were up for more climbing the next morning.

We had brought all our car camping luxuries for breakfast, including eggs, frying pan, cheese, salsa, stove, ceramic Melitta, and fresh ground Vita coffee. The only thing we forgot was fuel. Fortunately the Eightmile campground comes with sturdy grates over the fire rings, so cooking eggs over a fire was not that different from cooking on the gas stove at home, with the added feature that eggshells could be conveniently disposed of by dropping them into the fire right next to the pan.

After our somewhat smoke- and ash-flavored breakfast and coffee were consumed, we headed over for R&D, a nice moderate multipitch that was close enough to the road that Travis could wander a short way up the trail and find a sunny spot to watch us from. With three climbers on a pair of half ropes, the only way to not have a major hassle is to have one climber lead all of the pitches. I didn’t mind giving Sketchy the lead at all, that meant wouldn’t even have to take my socks off (it was still cold). There’s something really nice about climbing in really comfortable shoes.

R&D

• X-Y Crag the X, and the Y, not the Z…
• Classic Crack, 5.8+ trad (lead) finally lead it clean, after not even being able to do anything but fall up it on toprope several times
• R&D + Cocaine Connection, 5.7 trad (followed) There’s nothing mellower than following an easy multipitch climb in approach shoes. So mellow I forgot to clean a piece and the team of actual authentic Germans behind us had to pick it up for me.

And of course we had to go to Munchen Haus again for lunch/dinner. Oktoberfest is only Friday and Saturday nights, so on Sunday afternoon it was even emptier than usual. The night’s frost had wilted a lot of the foliage in the giant hanging planters, which added to the morning-after look of the whole place, but we did get our wursts and our beer a lot quicker this time. And Travis still had his crazy hat, so it was like our own Oktoberfest.

There are good and bad points to having a significant other who likes to climb. One thing is that I kind of spend every weekend together, which means it’s got to be something he wants to do. Sometimes it’s nice to have a break. The significant other in question has been doing a lot more mountain biking and is not really into climbing and hiking lately, so he wanted to spend the weekend in Cle Elum mountain biking with our friend Chris (who’s moving from Cle Elum to Reno). That meant I had about half a day to myself, which I decided to spend hiking somewhere near Cle Elum. Mt Daniel is the highest point in King County, and while it’s much closer to Highway 2 than I-90, it happens to be most conveniently accessed via the Cle Elum River Road and FR 4330.

The Cathedral Rock Trail is wide and horse-friendly, and the 2200 ft up to the PCT through shady forest and meadows carpeted with evergreen shrubs and autumn-red huckleberry bushes goes quickly. The dotted line Peggy’s Pond trail around Cathedral Rock is a bit more difficult, but not much a problem with the cool breeze and my light pack.

Fall Colors, Vegetable Department

From Peggy’s Pond there is a maze of twisty little climber’s trails, all alike, heading up the basin towards the Southeast Ridge. I ended up following some cairns on the south side of the ridge and ended up almost at Circle Lake before I headed straight up 1000 ft on loose scree to get back on the ridge. So, don’t trust the cairns, and when in doubt, go up. Once you are on the pointy part of the ridge, it is pretty obvious where to go (photo is looking down on the SE Ridge from the East Peak):

Looking SE on the SE Ridge

The ridge looks pretty pointy from this side, is actually pretty wide and easy to follow. I like ridge hikes in general since you can see in all directions (including where you are going and where you came from). Also, some of my nemeses like devils club and slide alder do not grow on ridges. The only thing that is sometimes unpleasant is weather, of which there was a bit of the wind-type. It was mostly not so bad, until I got to the East summit. I happened to be wearing wool so I was only having problems with my hair (and occasionally with my pack, since it was almost empty of water), but two other people wearing shells were having some luffing issues.

The East summit is where the “Mount Daniels” USGS benchmark is, but it’s not the true summit. In fact, the Beckey guide suggests that you bypass the East summit altogether to traverse to the Middle and West summits. I only had about 9 hours for the round trip and had already used 5 (the pothole dodging on the drive in took more time than I thought), so I didn’t think I had time to go to the other two summits. I still started poking around to see if there was an easy way down to the East/Middle saddle instead of backtracking and taking the loose-looking trail traversing below the East summit. When the wind picked up some small rocks and threw them at me, though, it confirmed my inclination to turn back. Sometimes it’s nice to have an excuse to return, too.

One of the things I like about hiking by myself is that I don’t have to worry about the pace. I can go as fast or slow as I want, I can run down the trail just because it happens to be flat and not have a bunch of roots in it, I can stop for half an hour and look at ptarmigans.

Fall Colors, Ptarmigan Department

Aside from their names starting with the enticing silent p (which, according to wikipedia, is entirely decorative — the word comes from Gaelic, not Greek), ptarmigans have some of the most perfect camouflage for the high alpine meadow environment. I am convinced that there are different ptarmigan feather patterns for different kinds of rocks, and that if not for their red eyebrows, they would be invisible even to other ptarmigans. Also, since they are not often eaten by large creatures that walk on the ground, they do not mind you sitting and watching them peck at heather berries.

Of course, spending half an hour looking at birds (and, um, some more time eating tasty huckleberries) meant that I had to hurry down the trail to make it back to Cle Elum by dinner time (with a stop in Roslyn for some afternoon coffee).

• Mt Daniel, SE Ridge

The forecast for the Darrington area was for rain on Saturday morning and high pressure building on Sunday. It was a little vague about what was supposed to happen between Saturday morning and during the day Sunday. On the theory that a rainy day outside is better than a sunny day sitting at home, we headed to Sloan Peak.

Sloan Peak is somewhat excessively pointy and features a wide, exposed west face with cracks, dihedrals, roofs, and blocks all over it. The aesthetics and relatively short approach make it popular with climbers, with a variety of routes including the third class Corkscrew Route first done in 1921 by miners Harry Bedal and Nels Skaar and a new “5.10++” route put up just a few weeks ago by Blake Herrington and Rad Roberts. We were aiming for something in between, the 5.8 Northwest Buttress.

On the drive up the weather was starting to look promising (or at least promising enough to give us a bit of hope). On the Mountain Loop Highway a few patches of blue sky opened up and we convinced ourselves that the water on the windshield was just splashing from the road. On the drive up the rattly logging road and the hike up the quiet, overgrown trail we convinced ourselves the rain was just dripping from the trees. One benefit of the dampness is the array of mushrooms of all shapes and colors.

Amanita

When we emerged into the final clearing in the basin and had our first fog-veiled glimpse of the West Face we did have to admit it was actually raining. Fortunately we found a giant boulder to use as an awning. It even had a couple of metal rods pounded in it to hang our climbing gear on.

At least we had a nice camp

After some recreational eating in the dry spot under our boulder, we settled in early for the night. Rain dripped, dropped, and sprinkled on the unsheltered back end of the tent all night and into the early morning. There might have been hope for the rock to dry out if the sun came out, but when we peeked out, we saw this:

Good Morning, Sloan

Heavy fog didn’t look good for dry rock, and neither did the snow on the upper half of the mountain that we saw when the fog blew away for a second. Sometimes the weather wins, but at least we could distract ourselves with snacking on our way out:

Huckleberries!

Links: Bedal Creek Trail description, more photos

This was supposed to be the second annual WCN Leavenworth trip I’ve organized. This year it turned out to be only 4 people, so we rattled around a bit in the group campground.

Laura and I got to the Icicle Friday afternoon, after stopping at Leavenworth Mountain Sports in town to pick up a guidebook (note: if you ever misplace your guidebook (or two of your guidebooks), you can borrow the shop copies for $2 a day). We decided to take advantage of the lack of weekend crowds to get on the moderate, multi-pitch, multi-starred Givler’s Crack. It is as delightful as it looks, even with the awkward semi-hanging belay I managed to get in there.

There are quite a few moderate multipitch routes in the area, so when we were done we went looking for another one. As usual for the Leavenworth book, finding stuff is not quite as obvious as the nice black and white line drawings (it would be overstating things to call them maps) make it seem. We ended up finding Fit and Trim. It’s very different from Givler’s — it’s all friction slab with knobs — but also a lot of fun. The start seems a little height dependent, but Laura figured out some sort of flying leap to an undercling. From there it was mostly knobs to the top.

The sun was setting as we got to said top, so we got to descend in twilight. We got back to our gear while it was still plenty of light, but soon we were looking for gray cairns on gray dirt with rapidly darkening gray light and one headlamp. The only way out is down, and all ways down lead to the road, so we couldn’t have actually gotten lost, but we lost the trail, found another, got cliffed out, followed a clump of trees, found another trail, and finally found ourselves pushing our way through a grove of white barked aspens and ended up on the road 20 yards from the car.

• Givler’s Crack, 5.7+ (I led p1 and p2, Laura led p2.5) I think p2 is leadable in one 70m rope length, but the crack eats gear and I only have a single rack so I got to practice building a 3 piece equalized gear anchor without a cordelette.
• Fit and Trim, 5.8 (Laura led p1, I led p2) Fun route, exciting start.

Saturday was the big day in the shade at Pearly Gates. Pearly Gates is one of the rare shady crags at Leavenworth — in both Tumwater and Icicle Creek canyons, most of the walls are on the north side, which means they’re south facing. The packed Snow Lakes trailhead parking lot is not immediately a bad sign, since it’s mostly used by backpackers and day hikers getting in to the Enchantments, but we did see quite a few people unloading rope bags and trad gear. However, once we did the always-more-exciting-than-I-remember stream crossing, we didn’t see anyone else on the trail, and when we got to the always-farther-away-than-I-remember wall, we found it empty, except for a group of shaggy free soloists.

Goat watching us climb

Laura and I were still the only ones there, so we started out taking turns leading/cleaning the moderate cracks on the left side. It was really nice to climb with someone with about the same skill level and objectives, especially at Pearly Gates which is a 5.8-10 paradise. Soon, Clare and Michelle showed up (accompanied by a couple more goats). Right around when the afternoon sun went around the ridge and started baking the granite, we ended the day on the right side. Clare and Michelle did the full Dog Ate My Topo (including Clare’s first real lead fall), and Laura and I did p1 of Milky Way — all four of us and a baby goat met at the shared belay ledge.

• Pearly Gates, Cell Phone Posse, 5.7 (lead) short, just ok, but you can TR and/or take a look at Celestial Groove from it
• Pearly Gates, No Room For Squares, 5.8 (follow)
• Pearly Gates, Celestial Groove, 5.9+ (lead) took a few tries to get the first few moves without some aid falling
• Pearly Gates, Milky Way, 5.10- (lead p1) easy but exposed traverse along the lip, then some real friction slab

It was still only 4 of us in the campground, but we had the usual (over-)abundant WCN potluck dinner.

Sunday was just as hot as Saturday. Conveniently, the only shady north facing crags, Snow Creek and Pearly Gates, are also some of the longest hikes, so we thought we’d give some of the sunny south facing stuff close to the road a try. Also I wanted a rematch with Dogleg. We said goodbye to Laura, who had to get back to Seattle early, rearranged gear into Clare’s little car, and headed to Dogleg. Breakfast and rearranging had taken some time, so by the time we got to Alphabet Rock, the only shade to be had was behind small rocks and scraggly bushes at the base. I deposited my pack there and started racking up so I could get it done before the rubber on my shoes started to melt.

Dogleg Crack

Fortunately it is not a terribly long route, and I managed to beat the heat and finish the climb. The heat did catch up to us while we were TR’ing Dogleg and the face climb variation next to it. I had to sit down to belay because the ground got too hot to stand on with bare feet, and I actually dropped one of my cams while putting it in my pack because it was too hot to touch. Climbing more that day, at least in the sun, was pretty much out of the question.

The only upside of 100 degree weather in Leavenworth is that you can actually swim in the Icicle River (as opposed to putting one toe in and going “Eeeee, cold!”). Conveniently, one of the nicest sandy swimming holes on the Icicle is right across the road from Alphabet Rock, so we traded harnesses for bikinis and spent a pleasant half hour or so swimming (or rather mermaid Michelle was swimming and Clare and I were more like wading and sunbathing on rocks).

• Alphabet Rock, Dogleg Crack, 5.8+
• Alphabet Rock, bolted route next to Dogleg, 5.10