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.

After stuffing down three packs of oatmeal and a package of Pop tarts, we said our goodbyes to everyone in camp and hit the road up to Washington Pass. We pulled into a clearing on the opposite side of the road from the Blue Lake Trail-head just after 9:00am, and finished our preparations for the day. With a cool morning breeze chilling me, I decided to put on some more clothes and to add an extra layer to my gear for the day. In our haste, we both neglected to put on sunscreen or bring sunglasses, though it would prove only a minor annoyance. We started up the winding trail of footprints and skin tracks shortly afterwards, just ahead of a pair of skiers heading for the same objective.

Approaching

We followed the tracks to the south and east, through the trees, to where it opened up to views of the West faces of the Liberty Bell Massif. With tracks all over the place, we ended up using a down track as our path through the small basin below the West Face of South Early Winter Spire. In tennis shoes, as we were, this provided for an engaging walk up steep terrain. Not being able to kick steps in the hard morning snow, we high stepped from plunge step, to plunge step of our trail to the base of the climb, just left of the split larch mentioned in the Red Beckey. Finding a narrow ledge just above this distinct landmark, I put on the extra fleece shirt I had fortunately brought, put my Harness on, and flaked out the rope. It had taken a tad more than an hour to reach the start of our climb and we wasted little time in the cool morning air before Michael started up the first Pitch.

While I belayed, I put on my fleece gloves that I had brought and did a few deep knee bends to keep the rest of my body warm. Once I heard the call "Off Belay", I immediately stripped off my tennis shoes and thick wool socks and wriggled my toes into my rock shoes, leaving my liner socks on. I stuffed the wind jacket I had put on into the little summit pack we had for the day and clipped my shoes to my harness, and took off after Michael.

I followed some broken flakes up and left of my Belay ledge through a short section of Chimney climbing to a large ledge where Michael had setup his belay. Above us were several option, of which I chose a short overhanging hand-Crack for my first Lead of the day. A few easy stemming moves led past this feature, then up and left through various broken and discontinuous lower angled cracks, ending at a large ledge with a couple of snow patches and trees on either side. As I belayed Michael up to my spacious perch, I couldn't help but gape at the wide crack that loomed above for his next lead.

Looking South

I reeled in Michael to my ledge and gave him the rest of the rack and slings that I had on my harness. Then we moved the belay to the left side of the ledge, so the rope was in a better position for a long rope stretching pitch. Stepping on the snow patch as the first few moves, he moved up through some small trees to the base of the wide crack and buried the #4 Camalot that we brought. A little farther up, the crack narrowed slightly and he plugged in the next largest size Cam we had. As he moved past this second placement he hollered something down to me about it being a bit stuck and he did not want to fiddle with it, then kept on climbing. About 40 more feet of spectacular climbing deposited him at another nice belay ledge.

Once he setup the belay and called down to me I began to followed the pitch, waiting to get to the cam that he mentioned might be stuck with each upward movement. Once I arrived at the stance where he placed it from, I saw that indeed it was buried to the hilt, with some of the lobes almost hopelessly over-cammed. I had him take up the slack so I could Hang on the rope and fiddle with it in a more secure position. Lacking a nut tool, I scraped and scratched my fingers and hands over and under and all around trying to get the piece to free it's Gripped from the flaring crevice. After fifteen minutes or more, and nearly giving up on the stubborn cam, I finally retrieved it with my now bleeding hands. I finished the pitch and joined Michael at his stance, happy I didn't have to give him "You owe me a cam" lecture.

Again, with the sharp end of the rope tied to me, I had to choose from several options. The first led up a 5.9 lie-back crack on the far right of the ledge we were on. The second, a steep headwall with a finger crack, or finally an easy ramp off to the left. With my tail between my legs, I scurried up the easy ramp to the left to a large ledge. From there I had a great view of the body-eating chimney that splits the left side of the formation dubbed "The Dolphin". I then led back across to the right via some even easier terrain to a small notch on where I setup a belay after only 20 meters of climbing. Looming above, I could see the twin off-width cracks that were supposedly the Crux of the climb, as I pulled up Michael to my stance.

Need a Bear Hug

The "Bear Hug" cracks, as they are so aptly named, were both about 4 inches wide at their narrowest and more than 5 inches at their widest. As Michael crawled up the Slab that leads to the base of the cracks, I wasn't sure that the #4 Camalot that we brought was going to work for him. Once he reached the crack, he managed to place the next smallest piece just below where the twin cracks split the face, and made the Move up into them. As he stemmed and lie-backed up, he came to a stance to place the #4 and he yelled down that it just barely fit and would probably be worthless. He finished the cracks to the top nonetheless, and setup a belay in a large notch to the right.

After following that excellent pitch, we stopped for a few minutes and I pounded some water, a bar, and a package of GU. We stood around taking in the views and snapping photos of skiers skinning up below a twenty-plus foot cornice that had been slowly deteriorating throughout the day. It's was amazing that even with the obvious signs of the cornice breaking large blocks off that day that there were still people willing to ski beneath it.