Molar Tooth

Having let myself get a little out of shape in the past two months, when a friend talk to me about doing a trip this last weekend I was a bit worried I would get my ass handed to me. When my watch alarm woke me up at 4:00am on Saturday morning, I took a moment of silence to ask myself if I felt like I would be up for this. Our objective for the weekend was a long traverse that included four summits just North of Rainy Pass dubbed "Four Sheets to the Wind". As I passed in and out of a sleepy consciousness on the drive up, I had that butterfly feeling in my stomach which gave me a bad omen. Maybe it was the fact that there was a 50/50 chance of thunderstorms forecast for the evening and we were going to sleeping in Bivy bags all night long. Maybe not.

Wine Spires

All week long, as I watched the weather forecast go from good to bad and back to good, then bad again our plans kept fluctuating. Once Eric and Mike showed up at my house a little after 7pm on Friday we finally decided to head up to Washington Pass and Bivy in the basin below Burgundy Col. So, after a few packing adjustments and picking another Mike downtown, we were on our way to Mazama to crash at one of the Mike's friend's cabin. I was surely in store for a adventure with these new acquaintances, far more than I would realize yet.

Pearly Gates

When I got a call on Friday night from Brian, I really had not made much in the way of plans for the weekend in regards to climbing. From the weather forecasts that were playing on the TV it the hopes of getting any climbing done was pretty slim. So, when I agreed to go out a climb with some of his students from the course he was teaching my hopes were not very high in getting any good climbing done. Flashes of drenched slabs and wet cracks splashed through my mind as I drove across the pass towards Leavenworth in a driving rain that never let up all the way there. As I pulled over to crash in the back of my truck along the side of the road, I took extra special care not to get my gear completely wet.

Liberty Bell Group

After an long evening hanging out at the camp fire on Sunday night, we woke up later than we had planned on the night before. I arose from my sleeping quarters in the back of my 4runner when Michael opened the back hatch to get some of his food for breakfast. I immediately sat up and shook off the sense of lethargy that was beckoning me to go back to sleep and started to pack my gear for the day. I grabbed the box of oatmeal I had brought for breakfast and walked over to the picnic tables in front of the cabin. My water bottles were devoid of liquid, so I took several minutes to walk down to the river to pump water. By the time I came back to start boiling water, the sun's rays had finally washed away any doubts about our objective for the day. I greeted that though with a smile.