The temperatures climbed into the 90’s as we descended from Snoqualmie Pass (2 hour delay, vehicle fire) Friday morning to the hot, dry side of the Cascades. As we passed the fruit stands and convenience stores of Naches and Tieton I started scanning the guidebook for somewhere cool. 5000 feet up and with promised 2PM shade, South Fork fit the bill. Julia’s truck made the zigzag up logging roads a lot more comfortable (if not in a high clearance vehicle, it’s mostly fine, just bumpy, but be careful dodging the washout low down, and consider parking at “turn left at the last fork” instead of driving the last 0.7 mi).

One unique feature of South Fork is that one of the walls there is composed of tiled hexagons. If you think of the usual vertically arranged hexagonal columns at Vantage, Tieton’s Royal Columns, or even Devil’s Tower, these are sideways and you climb on the column “tops”!

Hexagons!

I’ve eyed the hexagon walls in the guidebook for a while but have never made it to one (the other one is mostly 5.12s, so this is probably the more realistic one). We did two easy routes on the hexagons (there are also several more listed as “Project” that we didn’t try), but I was most impressed by the neighboring Astral Wall. It’s blocky, steep, surprisingly clean, and the 10a and 10b we did (the easiest routes on the wall) were really fun. It continues with an 11 and some intriguing overhanging projects with fixed draws (this forum post seems to have the most up to date information on new routes). We didn’t have time for me to fall my way up a 200 foot long 5.11 so I’ll have to leave those for next trip…

Astral Wall

• South Fork, Hexagonal Satellites, Hexavalent, 5.7 sport (lead) low angle, mossy, the climbing isn’t so amazing, but it’s cool looking rock
• South Fork, Hexagonal Satellites, Hexagonal Crack, 5.8 trad (lead) same as above, but trad
• South Fork, Astral Wall, West Arete, 5.10a sport (lead) long moderate overhanging sport route
• South Fork, Astral Wall, Thanks Andy, 5.10b sport (lead) similar to and not much harder than West Arete, maybe a bit more sustained

Saturday morning was cool and cloudy at our campsite on top of Lava Point, so when I failed to locate the “obvious rock cairn atop a stump” leading to Dream Wall in a timely manner, we went down to the Bend to enjoy some columns. We started on the left, with Julia leading a nice crack. Next I made a mockery of a slabby bolted route (clipped two bolts on it, decided I was not up for this slab stuff, went around back and climbed a dirty crack instead). I decided to stick to crack climbs for the rest of the day. The only other misadventure was throwing the rope into the wind and getting it stuck in a broken pillar about 6 routes over, necessitating 1 rap to an anchor halfway down, a tension traverse to another anchor 2 columns over, and finally a rap to the stuck rope (lesson for the day: no knots at the end of the rope when rappelling a half-rope-length route). The whole operation was definitely tedious. We were both at the top and had plenty of gear and plenty of cracks to put it in, so we weren’t that worried, but Dakota was — fortunately she was anchored in or she would have came up after us.

Cracks and more cracks at The Bend

Despite all the shenanigans we got quite a few good crack climbs in on lead and TR. The clouds made for nice temperatures all day, dramatic views across the valley, and even held off on precipitating until almost sunset.

• The Bend, People, Places, and Things, 5.8 trad (TR) led by Julia
• The Bend, Cherry Bomb, 5.10a sport (TR) tagging it TR even though I “led” it. Led it by corkscrewing around the whole column on easy cracks because it was too slabby for me. On TR it was fine, but it would have had some moments on lead…
• The Bend, Dancing Bear, 5.10b trad (lead) climb was fine, rap anchor is a little annoying to get to, descent was a little epic
• The Bend, Heartbreak of Psoriasis, 5.10c trad (TR) similar to above
• The Bend, Hallowed Ground, 5.9 trad (lead)
• The Bend, Reckoning, 5.10b trad (TR) may have been the best route of the day… should have led Pure Joy, a 10c that shares the same start, but it started raining

Sunday started out cool again, and we both had routes we wanted to get on at Royal Columns (Inca Road for Julia and Orange Sunshine for me), so we went to try our luck there. It turned out to be clear and sunny, so the conditions weren’t as great as Saturday, but we got there early enough that the wall was still shading itself. We got on Inca Road right away, then Little Known Wonder.

By the time we were done with this, Orange Sunshine had been baking in the direct sun and was hot to the touch. There was still a short window to find shade in cracks shaded by neighboring columns, but the sun was coming around fast so I had to pick one quick. We set up (including moving the puppy anchor to a nice shady cave) and I got on Jam Exam, a straightforward 5.9, which I kind of rushed through because I could feel the sun creeping up. It actually felt good to stop at each rest just long enough to place gear and not completely think through the whole route. I watched the sliver of shade disappear as Julia cleaned it, and by the time she was done the brick oven was in effect. We could have driven to a shaded area, but we bailed on that in favor of getting home at a reasonable hour and picking up some peaches on the way back.

• Royal Columns, Inca Road, 5.9 trad (lead)
• Royal Columns, Little Known Wonder, 5.7 trad (TR)
• Royal Columns, Jam Exam, 5.9 trad (lead) racing the sun

Dakota likes Miuras too

I always have fun climbing with Julia, especially since we share some favorite crack sizes. And, puppy!

One other highlight of the trip was sleeping in my new hammock. Though since it was not a fancy camping hammock with a rainfly my stuff got half wet while we were racing back in the rain on Saturday night. So I turned my pillow over and my sleeping bag inside out and joined Julia and Dakota in their tent (where Dakota thought it would be fun to chew on my hair).

Looking back on the trip, everything was very enjoyable, but I feel like I missed a few opportunities to do more challenging routes, even though I was trying mid 10’s (which I think of as my limit). I should probably be working on leading faster though, since there were a few fun routes that I did on TR instead of leading to save time. I secretly enjoyed getting the rope stuck and unstuck (not enough to do it on purpose of course!). I did discover two new favorite areas: South Fork which was brand new to me, and The Bend, where I’ve been once before (but never got to lead anything).

[all photos]

It’s all part of the charm of the domes of Leavenworth — crashing through tick-infested brush, slipping on pine needles, rereading approach descriptions (the new book has better maps and directions, but this seems to only make me feel sillier after getting lost). All in pursuit of unfamiliar rock to climb — squinting up to catch the flash of sunlight off the anchor bolts, figuring out the sequence for the route, and maybe discovering a new favorite spot.

Soon enough we were up at Planet of the Eights. It’s kind of typical Leavenworth foldy-bulgy slab, protected by a couple tricky gear placements and a couple bolts. I kind of like slab climbing but I don’t think Sketchy and Denny were in the mood for more after their leads. Anyway, it was easy to lure me away by offering me the first lead on Poison Ivy Crack, a clean curving finger-to-hands dihedral (which we passed on the way up).

Poison Ivy Crack turned out to be as fun as it looked (too bad it was so short). And yes, there is poison ivy at the bottom (leaves of three, let it be…). After we all had our turn (and I did some TR flailing on the 11b slab next to it — note to self, helmet cams and featureless vertical slab climbing do not go well together) we wandered over to explore the rest of Purina Crag.

El Caliente, 5.9

We only did one route. There was definitely more that looked good, including a bolt-protected 11 that looked a bit exciting but not too hard. Careno Crag is just a little further and looks way better on paper — multiple-starred multipitch routes in the 10- range, and lots of starred single pitch stuff in the 9s 10s and 11s.

• Planet of the Eights, Surveillance of Assailants, 5.8 mixed (TR) kind of dirty, fun slab
• Planet of the Eights, Make Mine a Bold One, 5.8+ mixed (TR) more of the above
• Purina Crag, Poison Ivy Crack, 5.9 trad (lead) fun!
• Purina Crag, El Caliente 5.9, trad (lead) seemed easier than 5.9

After the easy and familiar was done with, it was time to look for a bit more of a challenge. I was a little confused because of a missing bolt and my inability to tell the difference between a 5.8 “difficult mantel” and a 5.11, but I did manage to find Princely Ambitions without any actual 5.11-attempting. The first pitch was super fun (even with treating myself to some classic rope drag and having to fix it with some downclimbing and backcleaning), with lots of I-hope-this-works and there’s-got-to-be-some-texture-on-that-blank-looking-slab. I even got to see a little snake retreating into a finger crack I was going to use! It’s also nice and long (40m if you count the easy block scramble between the ground and the first bolt). Because the route makes a sharp turn at the crux, it’s just as exciting for the second, but Chris cruised it despite not having done much multipitch climbing recently.

Chris on Princely Ambitions 5.9

After this assurance that 5.9 at Index is challenging, but not toooo haaard, we went looking for some more 5.9s. The classic Godzilla was occupied, of course. Some Index regulars saw me flipping through the book, and suggested a 5.9 offwidth called the Quarry Crack. We never made it there because someone else suggested a semi-secret moderate pitch — starting up Shirley (listed as a 5.11c in the book, so I flipped right past it) and escaping to another set of anchors before the hard part. The crux of the abbreviated version is a pretty arch feature marked as a 10a on the topo (or maybe the “exciting” traverse to the escape anchors). A nice bonus was the view of the crux of Thin Fingers (who wants to set up a TR for me on that?).

As I was putting away my rope, someone yelled “Rock!” I looked at them, saw the rock coming straight at me, and barely had time to stop looking at it as it hit me on the side of the head. I think I was literally the only person at the base wearing a helmet. All it did was make a loud noise, but if I wasn’t wearing a helmet it could have been a bad time. I’m not sure if I would call that bad luck or good luck! I climb at famous choss factories like Vantage and Exit 38 all the time, and the first time I get hit is at Index!

Slug and purple-stemmed monkeyflower

I definitely want to do a lot more at Index, especially if the rest of the 3 and 4 star 9s and 10as are anything like the two I got to try this time…

• Lower Town Wall, Great Northern Slab, 5.7 trad 3p (lead) Woo, easiest route at Index!
• Lower Town Wall, Princely Ambitions, 5.9 trad 2p (lead) Fun!
• Lower Town Wall, Little Shirley, 5.10a trad (lead) The first pitch of Shirley, escaping right to another anchor before the hard part. Fun little arch feature.

Me

This is also the first time I’ve been at Exit 32 in the morning. The angle of the sun makes such a difference. In the afternoon the sun is behind the wall so it looks kind of dark and menacing, but in the morning it’s all beautiful grays and whites.

Salal and Sara

The highlight of the day was Sara’s redpoint of Son of Jesus. I got to lead it twice, too! I was surprised how easy it felt (except for a moment when I stuck my whole hand in a jug full of mud) since it took me a few tries to get it last year. I would like to claim that it was because got better but I’m afraid that I’ll have to credit buying new shoes, or maybe just having done it so many times. BLM-6 was really fun climbing, but it didn’t feel as good because I felt like I was cheating. I could just barely reach a pre-placed draw to protect a hard move at the 2nd clip (so I wouldn’t have been able to reach the bolt), so I may have backed off the lead if Mike hadn’t left the draw.

Mike

I also got to watch Mike work on a tricky looking 12b (this might be the only route I’ve tried that I haven’t even been able to fall my way up on TR…).

• World Wall, Reptiles and Amphetamines, 5.9 sport (TR)
• World Wall, Son of Jesus, 5.10c sport (lead) Sara and Mike let me lead this twice! thanks!
• World Wall, BLM-6, 5.10d sport (lead) note to self, bolts are positioned for a much taller person, much easier if the draws are there
• World Wall, Dairy Freeze, 5.12b sport (TR, didn’t finish)

Unfortuantely this year the WCN group called it off because of the avalanche forecast. I’m sure plenty of people did it and had no issues, but most of us decided we’d rather not have to worry about it anyway, especially since the danger would inevitably disappear after a few weeks anyway.

There was also the temptation of Plan B at Vantage. It seems I’ve been there a lot this year, but in the spring the scenery is changing weekly. The pink phlox-looking stuff is not in bloom anymore but these were:

Puffy Flowers

And of course it’s great to spend time with friends in such a beautiful setting!

Dawn and Traisa

• Sunshine Wall, Air Guitar, 5.10a trad (lead) one of my favorites, and easy for a 10a, but I need to get used to people watching/talking about me when I’m climbing…
• Sunshine Wall, Clip ‘em or Skip ‘em, 5.8 sport (lead)
• Tomato Wall, Hamhocks 5.9 trad (lead w/falls) proximal cause of falling was getting a cam hooked in a loop on my shoe, but if I had chosen better gear placements (ie. placed nuts from the good rests and saved the cams for the awkward layback stuff), I may have been able to untangle myself without freaking out. Or if I had just borrowed everyone else’s .75s. Or if I hadn’t climbed over-conservatively because everyone told me the route was a sandbag (I don’t think it is; if I can almost do it it shouldn’t be more than 5.9)
• Tomato Wall, Go Cat Go 5.10c sport (lead w/falls) just couldn’t figure out this one (or I’m too short), a lot of climbing up to reach a clip, then downclimbing to get back on my line

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
]]> http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/2010/05/08/leavenworth-may-2/feed/ 0 http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/2010/03/06/hubba-hubba-january-17/ http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/2010/03/06/hubba-hubba-january-17/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:01:17 +0000 Laurel http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/?p=465 We hadn’t had enough the weekend before, so we went back (with a different pair of crampons for Sketchy) to sample the other lines of Hubba Hubba. We even got organized enough to get there there Friday night and camped in the snow in the abandoned Bridge Creek campground.

Saturday morning we woke up to a bunch of new snow. Not a good sign because the route would be buried. But we had bacon:



These ice tools are good for something

After a leisurely breakfast we hiked up to Hubba Hubba and found it doing this:





We took our packs off and waited in a debris-free area and watched more snow come down. After an hour of dawdling it looked like the sloughs were slowing down and getting smaller, so Sketchy decided to go for it and started up Hubba Hubba Center (the line with the pretty icicle curtain). It worked out fine — the only showers he took were after flipping off the route while tying in and after he had set the anchor and was belaying me up.

After we finished the first pitch there was more snow coming down around us, so we decided to bail to a tree anchor a short traverse to the left. I managed to place one screw in decent ice and sling the ropes over a horn to protect my traverse, but the after that was a slab covered with a thin sheet of ice. Oops. Nothing to do except scrape across it to the tree. When Sketchy got to that part he was a little nonplussed, especially since I had scraped some of the ice off, but he found some mossy crack to wedge his pick in so he was fine.

Ice climbing is surprisingly time consuming (especially when we have to wait for a night’s snowfall to clear off the route), so when we got down it was already time to head down. We hung out with a friendly husky mix named Solstice who was loitering around our campsite and then went to the Munchen Haus in town (they have heaters in the winter). When we got back to camp we had a surprise.



Bacon Thief

Someone stole all our bacon and eggs! And then walked on the picnic table, leaving his big paw prints so we knew exactly who it was! At least he left us some coffee and a jar of salsa.

When we woke up the next morning we had high hopes for another day of ice climbing, but we had another surprise. Rain! Ice climbing under snowballs is bad enough but ice climbing in rain is a bit much. So we had our breakfast of coffee and salsa and left. At least the rain meant that we wouldn’t have any trouble driving on the unplowed road…

]]> http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/2010/03/06/hubba-hubba-january-17/feed/ 0 http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/2010/03/06/hubba-hubba-january-10/ http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/2010/03/06/hubba-hubba-january-10/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:22:48 +0000 Laurel http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/?p=418 Sketchy, Denny, Megan and I headed out to Leavenworth for some ice climbing. On the way over it was interesting to see our usual summer rock climbing destinations covered in snow and icicles. We got to Hubba Hubba and found the entire contents of Stone Gardens there. We ran in to Genevieve and Jeremy on the trail and caught up with Mike and Matt as they were unpacking at the base.


Seattlites

There were 8 of us and 3-ish lines so things got split up pretty reasonably. Sketchy and I got an anoymous line between HH Left and HH Center. Unfortunately Sketchy broke a crampon about 3/4 of the way up the first pitch, had to downclimb to his last screw, and then lower down so I could give him my left crampon. Trying to do the higher pitches with 2 people and 1.5 sets of crampons didn’t seem like a great idea, so after I followed the route we rapped down. Everyone else was still finishing their routes and descending, so I did get to lead about half of the pitch to a tree, my first lead on ice (though it probably shouldn’t count, since I spent half the time digging out the tree so I could get to the trunk and set an anchor).



Hubba Hubba Left/Center

]]> http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/2010/03/06/hubba-hubba-january-10/feed/ 0 http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/2010/03/06/snoqualmie-mountain-january-24/ http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/2010/03/06/snoqualmie-mountain-january-24/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:05:38 +0000 Laurel http://www.mountainsquirrel.com/?p=419 When snow and weather conditions are good and there’s a boot track to follow, Snoqualmie Mountain is hardly even a scramble, just a long hike. However, Denny, Megan, and I must have subconsciously wanted something more challenging. We got on a boot track leading towards Guye and ended up a thousand feet above the usual route in the bottom of Commonwealth Basin. Not wanting to lose the elevation we gained, we stayed high on Guye’s shoulder and traversed to meet the trail to Cave Ridge. It was more interesting than the usual route – steep and awkward at times but not difficult because of the good snow conditions. Better views too. Of course, the price of that is that it takes twice as long.


Guye Shoulder

When we were almost at the Guye/Cave Ridge saddle we met a descending group. “Great weather,” we said sincerely. “Great weather,” they said ironically, and described 50 mph gusts. After getting on the other side of the saddle and getting a hazy view of Snoqualmie Mountain itself, we experienced this firsthand.



Our Objective

The wind wasn’t really dangerous — I only got knocked over once, and anyway it was blowing towards the gentle slope side of the ridge and away from the cliff side. It was certainly annoying, with the flapping my hood off, icing up my glasses (as if it wasn’t hard enough to see through the horizontal snow), and blowing my ice axe at my shin. I’ve been in higher wind before but the amount of snow carried made it seem worse.

Denny wisely decided to stop at a tree and dig a hole to hide from the wind while Megan and I went towards the summit. Eventually Megan, who was a few yards ahead, reached some sort of local maxima and stopped, so we turned around. Usually when I’m outside I’m a little disappointed to be going back, but this time I was looking forward to getting out of the wind (and hoping that facing the other way would help the glasses situation).



Summit

As we headed back to the shelter of the big trees, the wind calmed down, and the snow really started settling. The track that we followed and pounded in was starting to fill in, and by the time we got on the snowshoe highway in Commonwealth Basin there was almost a foot of new snow on the ground.

See also my photos, Denny’s photos.

• Snoqualmie Mountain, 6,278 ft
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