A Route with No Name

I'm on a boat! And I'm not impressed.

Many climbers have comfort items they take into the mountains. Some carry a can of sardines or a flask of whiskey. Others require an extra sleeping pad or a pair of down booties. These creature comforts bring peace of mind and are almost always worth their weight. But between us, Spencer and I had managed to pack 270 pounds of food and gear for nine days in the mountains. On a pound-per-day basis, this was a personal record. Were we too comfortable?

“Eh, screw it,” we thought. Two unlucky mules would be carrying it all for the first 12 miles. Then we’d load it into a raft to cross a reservoir. After that, it was only a few thousand vertical feet to our planned base camp. We had enough time to make it work. Our goal was to climb a new route on Cloud Peak, the highest point in the Bighorn Mountains of northern Wyoming, a range still cloaked in mystery. We weren’t sure what we’d need, so we brought it all.

After accompanying our mules to the reservoir, it was time to say goodbye. We piled all of our gear, plus three adult males, into a tiny inflatable. While the motor was being gassed up by our guide, I noticed the fine print on the side of the raft: “Weight limit 600 lbs.” The engine sputtered to life and we shoved off. I felt the desperately cold water as we motored along and quickly realized it would prove impossible to salvage our gear if we sank. We hadn’t yet seen our objective and already I felt committed. None of it seemed to bother Spencer. He spent the whole ride making small talk with our guide who, in a dusty Stetson and painted-on Wranglers, didn’t strike me as the nautical type.

The North Cascades: An Onsight, A Bail, and an Alpine Adventure

It was early August in DC, and most of the city was enjoying vacation. For the unfortunate few who were left without an escape plan, life oozed by like molasses. Our aggressive training schedule for the upcoming October trip to Yosemite had me psyched to climb, but I was bored of Seneca quartz and New River sandstone. I felt like I was missing something in my climbing. It had been too long since I last felt the exhilaration and uncertainty of casting off on an adventure climb. Call it serendipity, or perhaps just blind luck, but in the midst of these feelings, my buddy Spencer e-mailed me and asked if I'd like to meet him in the North Cascades for some alpine climbing. When I read his e-mail, I knew immediately what I had been lacking: I needed to fill up on some mountains. I accepted his invitation, and within a couple of days plans were laid to meet in the Cascades in two weeks.

With little time to plan, we immediately began spit balling. We e-mailed back and forth, sharing links from Mountain Project to climbs that looked like they might possess the right combination of challenge, adventure, and access. We only had five days, so we knew we wouldn't be able to trudge too far into the wilds. Plus, I wanted to maximize the Yosemite training potential of this trip, which meant that pure rock routes would be the flavor du jour. That ruled out some of the big boys of the range. But not to worry; this was the Cascades, after all. There were still plenty of climbs that fit our narrow selection criteria.

Liberty Bell Group.
Photo from Mountain Project.

With our hopes and dreams for this trip laid out, it soon became clear that the routes in Washington Pass were good candidates. More specifically, the Liberty Bell group had a number of clean rock spires that appeared to possess the right combination of good rock, challenging climbing, and access.

The Liberty Bell group, which includes five granite spires, is tucked neatly into a hairpin turn in the North Cascades Highway. Conveniently, this meant that the approach would be trivial by Cascades standards. We decided that these routes would be a good starting point to get a feel for the rock and the range as a whole.