It was hard to decide what to do this sunny weekend. Robert and I eventually decided on the Glacier Basin area above Monte Cristo. I was actually a little skeptical about the prospects; I’d been wanting to get into the North Cascades for a while. The best way to get to the urban ghost town sprawl of Monte Cristo is by bike and we made quick time down the road, which was bumpy in a couple of spots. We stashed the bikes, crossed the creek, and made our way through the ghost town. Apparently, there was a population of some thousands back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. There wasn’t much left of many of the buildings. Some of the markers stood over naught but ruins or even less. Up the trail, I was pleased to see that we’d be passing by a large set of falls. Being a big fan of waterfalls, I wasn’t dissappointed at all at how many cascades there were.
Our orignal plan was a little vague but consisted of something like Monte Cristo to Cadet to Foggy. However, with my question of “Is East Wilmans really worth the climb”? That started a new idea germinating. “Yes!” retorted Robert. We slowly started concocting the plan to climb all three of the spires and then move on to Wilmans Peak and then perhaps Monte Cristo and beyond. OK, so we started up the pleasant snowfield to reach the base of the spire. I’d imagine this would be much more tedious in the late summer when the snow was melted and the climber would have to negotiate talus and scree.
When we arrived at the top, we noticed other climbers on East Wilmans Spire. So, we decided to tackle the other two spires first. We had to do a good bit of ’shwacking through thick evergreens to get on to a rough ledge system that led around the back side of the other spires. At one point, we had to downclimb loose terrain under a wet roof. The base featured a gully that reminded me of the “Paths of the Dead” in Lord of the Rings. This certainly couldn’t be the 3rd class section that Beckey described. At any rate, it looked way to steep to try. Turns out this would take you directly to the notch between the two, but we pressed on – probably the smart thing to do. Still, on the other side of a buttress we encountered more bushwacking and steep 4th and 5th class climbing. At one point, because of the steep and loose rock, we backed down and went around another small outcropping to more manageable 5th class soloing. However, at one section, I had Robert put me on belay. As I climbed passed him, I found a short passage through brush to snow that revealed that we were on the opposite side of the spires. Soon enough, we were at the base of the north spire and I lobbied to climb the south buttress (a new route?) instead of from the notch that Beckey mentions in his book. It turned out this route was a lot of fun: mostly 3rd class with some fun and easy bouldering problems near the top.
I don’t recall if we rappelled or downclimbed the route back to the notch, but the route on the south spire, the north arete, I suppose, looked spectacular from here. The first pitch was a broken 4th class (actually 5th) section on the edge of the face that led to an obvious belay stance. The second and last pitch was 5th class and featured “a hard move”. Hmm. We roped up at the notch and Robert headed off. At the belay ledge, I heard him yell, “I’m going to continue up!” Later, when I heard, “On belay!”, I started up and found that the first section, while still easy, was the toughest. The second pitch was fantastic: easy and solid cruising on low 5th class rock. If there were like seven or eight pitches like this, the south spire would be super popular. There was no “hard move” that either of us could find. The top, unfortunately was quite loose and we delicately climbed to the highest point. With a mix of rappelling and downclimbing we made it down to the belay ledge where rappel anchors were. Apparently, they were designed to rappel of the west side. We moved it a little so that we could avoid all the ugly scrambling and bushwacking to get up here; we opted to rappel the east. This would put us right at the base of East Wilmans Spire. We had to rebuild the anchor at one point in order to pull the rope. After two more rappels on loose terrain, we were back at the packs.
We waited for quite a while at the base of East Wilmans Spire for another party to descend. After about an hour, at 7pm, we decided to quit patiently waiting and head up. Because we still weren’t sure about camp, we decided to climb fast. We did the climb in two pitches and were back down in 30 minutes. East Wilmans was a fun climb, very easy but worth it. Our next job, however, was to get to campsites somewhere up on the ridge leading to Wilmans Peak. We wanted to get up on the ridge but were stymied by difficult rock (”snookered” as Robert would say). At one point, Robert considered roping up for a short but scary section that could put us up on the ridge. It was a lot harder looking than anything we’d done today and also we had full packs so we smartly decided to go back and walk down to the little glacier. Sure enough, beyond the glacier, we were able to get up on the ridge, but not after a long section of tough 4th and 5th class climbing. At one point, I requested another belay. Beyond that, I scrambled through some more scrub trees to a snowfield that led to perfect campsites. We were done for the day, no arguments!
We enjoyed an excellent sunset. There were rain clouds beyond Columbia Peak to the south (where Michael was earlier this day on Merchant Peak) but they appeared that they would not interfere with our plans. I fell in to a long uninterrupted sleep within minutes of turning in.
We awoke to a brilliant cloudless day. We set off for Wilmans Peak. I expected us to at least have to traverse a few gendarmes, but it turned out we slept right under the main summit of Wilmans Peak. However, beyond that, we were indeed “snookered”. Traversing over to Monte Cristo directly was out of the question; we were separated by large and steep gendarmes. So, the trip now transmuted into a climb of Columbia Peak from the 76 glacier. OK, so now we only had to get to the 76 glacier which lay directly below us, with nasty cliffs and gullies between us and it.
We started looking for a good place to start the descent. Apparently, there was this “Broadway Ledge” which is ostensibly used for such purposes. But, I don’t believe it after seeing it: a narrow and exposed ledge that is covered in loose scree. No thanks. We found an old rappel station and used that to make our first rappel into a scary and loose gully. At this point, I took very few pictures and video footage since I was most concerned with getting out. The stressful gully featured steep snow, loose steep rocks, and a few rappels, some of them overhanging. “Enough of this!”, I thought. “How much would I pay right now to be magically teleported out of here?” is a game that I sometimes play when the situation turns exhausting or stressful. It at least passed the time.
On the glacier, life became simple again. We trudged up the glacier with the intent on climbing Columbia Peak. Our plans, however, changed to abandon aspirations of a link-up with Monte Cristo but instead a loop hike out over Poodle Dog Pass and out the Silver Lake trail. This sounded pretty good to me, always a fan of the loop hike. We got to a high point on the glacier and stashed our packs. The climb up was always interesting: mostly 3rd class with a little 4th class and one short section of 5th class thrown in. Near the top, we had an exposed loose dirt traverse to get to some steep snow with deep ice axe placements that finally got us to the top.
The hike out via Poodle Dog Pass was pleasant, as I recall, though I was a bit tired. I didn’t bring a sun hat or anything so I had to wear my clunky helmet the entire day to prevent my head from being baked in the unrelenting sun. Moving towards Poodle Dog Pass, the views of the 76 basin started opening up. This valley is full of waterfalls all over. We actually took a water break at the top of one of the falls that fed directly in to the glaciel valley below. This was one of the most scenic rest stops I’d ever been at, I’d thought. We drank our fill from the melting snow water then headed back up, looking for the trail that would send us on our way down past Silver Lake.
A little more tree scrambling and ’shwacking finally got us up on the ridge framing the southwestern section of the valley. Not soon after, we’d found the trail. It was sometimes a challenge keeping up with the trail in and out of the snow, but we managed. The remainder of the hike out featured a brand new trail, so said Robert who’d taken the older trail some years ago. This one ended up leading us past Sunday Falls, a fantastic way to cap the hiking part of the trip. What remained was the enjoyable 4-mile coast back to the car.
Posted 6 years, 1 month ago at 2:43 am. Add a comment
To sneak in and nab Dragontail in a day was the plan. The dreary forcast called for yet another weekend of unsettled weather. Leavenworth looked reasonable at “partly cloudy” on Saturday and torrents on Sunday. Why not try a grade IV climb in a day…we’ve got to do something alpine this weekend! Getting a close look at Dragontail from Colchuck Lake, I’d forgotten how immense it’s north face was. We’re going all the way up there up that route? Awesome!
Michael and I decided that a car camp and avoiding an early morning two hour drive would be best so we set out from west of the Cascades in cloudy weather around 9:15pm. On arriving in Leavenworth, I noticed the stars and clear skies above us. We both were quite sleepy when we pulled into the campsite that Michael, Aidan, and I had used on Memorial Day 2003. We threw bivy sacks and sleeping bags down on the ground and slept soundly for 5-6 hours. I opened my eyes early in the morning and took a gander at the brightly lit surroundings. Oh no! We’ve overslept again! I yelled at Michael to wake up to which he replied in a pathetically tired voice, “No, it’s only 4:53, we can sleep for seven more minutes.” OK. Michael actually reported that it was light around 4 in the morning. What a great time of the year. We readied our things in the early morning chill and then took the short mile drive to the trailhead. We started hiking around 5:45.
We made quick progress up the trail. It seemed like no time at all had passed when we’d arrived at the first bridge and then at the turnoff to Colchuck Lake. All the previous times that I’d been here were in early May and they left an indelible memory. After all the falls through snow holes, the slips, the soaked boots, well everything having to do with wet snow, I was thoroughly enjoying the dry trail. Soon enough we were at the lake and then making our way up the Colchuck Glacier and patches of moriane to the base of the climb. The distance and elevation from the lake to the climb did not appear far, but, as usual, it was.
We continued on past campsites, some of which were occupied, and arrived at the base of the glacier. The snow was quite hard and sparkling and we took the time to put on crampons so we wouldn’t have to spend extra energy teetering one way or another trying to keep our balance. We were now in the sun which beamed down on us intensely. It was nice for a change and we happily put on our sunscreen. From where we were, it was nearly 1100 feet to the base of the climb, although it certainly didn’t look like it.
There was a small bergeschrund at the base of the wall that gave access to a short and semi-steep snowfield that led to the base of the rock. Here, we decided to keep our crampons on since the terrain looked reasonably easy (3rd and 4th class) and would soon lead us to another snowfield. Dry tooling seemed pretty easy, definitely easier and much less stressful than what was to come -- the steep snow traverse. Normally, this is just a continuation of 3rd and 4th class rock that we were on. Now, it was a traverse hard and steep snow with a scary cliff at the base of it. Because it was a rightward traverse, our right legs, especially the calves, became very sore supporting us. There were a few places to stop and rest, but by the nature of the scary terrain, we wanted to move through it quickly. I found this part of the climb easily the scariest and probably would have liked to have been roped up here. Actually, I felt very secure, but on the off chance of a slip, things could have turned ugly. Michael continued up snow on one section but I opted to get off the snow as soon as possible and enjoy the solid granite. Finally, we were at the base of the first 5th class pitch. We stopped to put on our shoes and get some lunch. By now, clouds had moved in to block out the sun. It looked liked the weather would hold though.
I led up the first pitch which was rated at 5.7. The beginning was problematic because the normally easy way was covered in snow, and I was done with climbing on hard snow (and I had my shoes). So, I decided to go straight up an open book and try to traverse over. This turned out to be quite difficult and I needed to back down, well beyond 5.7 (and there’s only one 5.7 crux at the top). So, I backed down, looked right, looked left, and opted to put both feet on the snow with solid handholds. That worked and I was on my way, although after a long delay. The climbing was easy for the most part, mostly low 5th class. There were series of corners and open books and I generally tended to stay on the left side where the rock was smoother, but with less lichen. The climbing was good. I could see the distinct leaning tower that marked the end of the first pitch very close to me as I approached the final crux, which was a burly short chimney that required a semi-strenuous lieback. Then, I passed the tree with the rap sling on it as some route descriptions mentioned and I was on the broad ledge that led around the leaning tower to the crux 5.8-5.9 pitch. I was expecting a reasonable belay station over there with slings and all -- there were none. I had to build my own. Not a problem, but I was just surprised.
The next pitch was the crux and Michael opted to go straight up the thin crack system. There was a corner option as well to the left that’s rated 5.8/5.9 that looked easier except when you got to the top, where the corner starts to arc over towards the climber and the footholds look really thin. The small crack was pretty tricky. Handjams were a little scarce for me and I ended up following the pitch using “gym” techniques by leaning way out and counter-balancing to get my feet higher to easier footholds (the lower part is more difficult). At the top of the crack, after a delicate shift to the right to a blockier section, I followed up a great hand crack corner. I found it awkward to use both foot and hand jams at the same time so I hand jammed my way up while keeping my feet placed out on small face holds.
I headed out for pitch three which turned out to be my favorite of the climb. It was rated 5.7 and felt like a joyous cruise up super solid granite on fun terrain where a solid hold was just where you needed it. The first part was definitely the trickiest -- a slick open book. This section protected well, but my pasted feet tended to slip while placing gear. Once I got a single piece in, I just opted to inelegantly heave my way to the top where the fun part started. The next long section was a fun corner that also featured nice views down to the glacier below. We could see little tiny ant men making their way up to the col. I wondered if they could see us.
I brought Michael up to a confined belay stance at a small and stunted evergreen. As he arrived at the top, he asked, “Do you feel any raindrops?” “No.” But before many minutes a little groppel started falling. Fortunately, the little bean bag balls bounced off the rock and collected on the level ground and wasn’t causing a problem. Michael led off on pitch 4 that was easy except for a short awkward chimney to squeak through. Beyond that, we began the long pitches of simul-climbing. We were relieved to be above the hardest climbing, but the falling snow was a little unnerving. We realized that we needed to just press on quickly and go up an over the peak; retreating back down the route would be hard and tedious.
I characterize the climbing on the upper pitches as relatively solid, although we had to take care on our holds. The climbing gets more loose the further away from the ridge crest we got, so we strived to stay right on the crest. It seemed like each pitch had short easy crux sections of 5.2-5.6.
We wisely decided to stop and put on our shells. The snowfall increased and eventually developed into flake. The flakes, unlike the groppel, would fall and melt directly on the face, quickly making the climb wet. At one point, Michael was leading and yelled down for me to put him on belay. I paid the rope out slowly, which unfortunately meant that the section was hard. I then went on belay and followed up. At this point, I had on no gloves and the snow was coming down really hard. I saw the difficulty in front of me: a sloping wet and mossy slab with a narrow crack on the left. The crack, as it turned out, was too shallow for any protection and Michael had essentially soloed it. I don’t think I would have tried that myself. There was a fixed pin in the crack but it wasn’t clipped and when I grabbed it, it pulled right out. I delicately made my way up, at one point nearly losing it; I was thankful for the belay. The snow was dumping on me now and my hands had a layer of snow on them and lots was falling down my open sleeves. I pressed on and at the top wrung the snow out and tightened down my jacket. At the belay, I continued on. The snow abated and eventually stopped, probably about an hour after starting. The sun, while it didn’t come out, shined through enough the high clouds to warm us up and help dry out the rock. A gentle wind also lent a helping hand. The rock became dry pretty quickly actually.
At this point I was just ready to be on the top in case the clouds decided to open up again. However, we were back to our usual joking mode and the climbing again became enjoyable and less stressful. Michael led out one final pitch below the summit block that led us through a steep and difficult overhanging crack. The crack was filled with ice. At this point, I didn’t care about being a purist and unabashedly grabbed on the gear to get myself to a better stance. Off to the right about 50 feet was easier terrain. Shucks, we could have gone that way. Oh well, no matter. At the top of this pitch was a section of snow. We could see the summit of the peak right in front of us. Because of time and snow, we opted to put on our boots and gaiters and take the standard route around the left side of the summit block and on up 3rd class slopes to the summit instead of the direct 5.7 finish to the summit. The snow traverse was fun and exposed and I paused a bit to get some video footage. We rounded the corner and scrambled our way a short distance to the top. Wow, it felt good to have the tough climbing behind us. We enjoyed sitting on the summit for 30 minutes or so. The clouds started descending again though and Stuart passed out of view.
The descent off the back side of Dragontail was a breeze and we enjoyed a beautifully long glissade on perfect snow. Aasgard Pass was a little more problematic, more scree and harder snow. At one point, I got out of control on my glissade and smacked into Michael. We both had to self arrest. After that, I opted to plunge step my way down. Michael, though, enjoyed the glissade-arrest-glissade-arrest approach and he got way out in front of me. That gave him the opportunity to go up Colchuck Glacier a hundred feet or so and retreive our hiking poles that we’d stashed.
We had a pleasant hike out. Finally, I felt in shape enough to not feel utterly exhausted and sick at the end of the climb, so I actually enjoyed the hike out. However, I did end up lying down on the bare rock at Mountaineers Creek while it gently drizzled on me. Michael decided to join in on the sleep and as he passed by he woke me up startling me -- ok, I guess I was really tired after all. We also passed some interesting folks who asked lots and lots of questions about rock climbing. Michael was pleasant with them and answered their queries, while I just quietly sat back and enjoyed the rest; I wasn’t really lively enough to talk much. I had forgotten to bring my headlamp on the climb (as my Colorado friends would say, “Well, it wouldn’t be a real trip if Theron didn’t forget something!”), however, we hiked out fast enough to arrive just in time before the sun set. I was really excited to have Dragontail under my belt, especially such a cool route!
Trip statistics: 12 miles, 6000 feet, 15 hours
Posted 6 years, 1 month ago at 1:05 am. Add a comment
