Leavenworth, May 2

This weekend was supposed to be my first time climbing at Index (except for the Great Northern Slab). We ran in to Jack at the gym during the week and invited him along; it was going to be his first time ever at Index! Of course, the weather wasn’t really cooperating so we kept on driving east until we found the sun in Leavenworth.

We started at Fish Wall, a bunch of moderates with some bolted routes with “optional” gear and some gear routes with couple of bolts (making full use of the color coding in the new guidebook). At Leavenworth that usually means nicely textured slabs with some short cracks of unknown funkiness.

Jack on the Fish Wall

We started out on a slightly mossy 5.8. The one moment of excitement was when Sketchy was leading, Jack was belaying, and I was laying in the sun a bit away from the rock. I saw a round dark shape come over the edge right above us. I yelled “Rock!”, Jack tried to get out of the way, I sat up and grabbed my helmet/pillow to actually put it on my head… and the wind carried the pine cone a few feet over us. Apparently the top of the crag consists of huecos completely filled with pine cones.

One thing I like about less traveled mixed gear/bolts routes at Leavenworth is that they aren’t completely covered in chalk marks, so I get to actually think about how to climb them. What I don’t like as much is that sometimes the difficulty and protection are kind of inconsistent, so it seems like arbitrary wandering around rather than a logical route.

Sketchy saw a chimney that he wanted to TR around the corner. It was right next to a bolted slab, Bottom Feeder, so I managed to convince him to let me lead the slab. I was glad that I did; it was my favorite route that day. The chimney was pretty uneventful climbing because I only did it on TR. Sketchy wanted to lead it, so I set myself up at the anchor so I could take pictures from above.

Sketchy leading out of the unnamed chimney

One unexpected treat was the brilliant yellow monkeyflowers and other plants growing in the moss cushions formed around seeps in the wall. Many climbers may only think of the granite in Icicle canyon in the cleaned and playable state, but I think the micro-ecosystems formed by rock and water are fascinating (and sometimes delicious — try the wild onions and miner’s lettuce).

Monkeyflowers

After leading a couple easy slab routes, I finally felt like I’d (almost, maybe) gotten used to the Leavenworth style of climbing again. There were a couple of possibly more difficult routes at the Fish Wall that I wanted to try since we were there anyway, but somehow we ended up having to leave. Leavenworth is kind of an odd place to climb for me because I love climbing there so much, but it seems like usually we leave as soon as it’s starting to get fun.

• Fish Wall, Bohemian Blowfish, 5.8 trad (TR) kind of wandering and mossy.
• Fish Wall, Sardine Routine, 5.9 trad (lead) also wandering, less mossy.
• Fish Wall, Bottom Feeder, 5.9+ sport (lead) book says “a small piece can be placed before the first bolt”, I’m short so I needed two
• Fish Wall, Unnamed chimney right of Bottom Feeder (TR) led by Sketchy. He had two #4 Big Bros which were just barely big enough