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.
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.
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.
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.
Not much longer after that, I scrambled up to another ledge on top of "The Dolphin", through some large jumbled blocks and had Michael move the belay to that spot. From this ledge, we could see up the upper rib where it formed an apex, as well as all the way to the "Rabbit Ears" formation. I led up this rib, past an old 1/4 inch Bolt, with a few hundred feet of Exposure on either side of the ridge. Stretching the rope out to it's full length, I frictioned up low Angle slabs and a few crack where I was just able to reach another small notch with a few blocks to belay from. The "Rabbit Ears" were just ahead of us and the summit just beyond.
As I sat back in my alpine lounge chair, belaying Michael up to my position, I soaked up the atmosphere and reveled in the views. There was barely a cloud in the sky and the North Cascade mountains were stretched far and wide in all directions around me. Once he had reached my ledge, he once again handed me the pack, and I gave him the rack for the next pitch of climbing. Up and around the left side of the gendarme he went, avoiding the Rappel into the gully on the right that most depictions of the route explain. After not being able to bear the rope drag any longer, he stopped and setup a belay after only 25 meters and brought up to the notch behind the "Rabbit Ears".
We quickly swapped gear again and I led the last 20 feet to the top of the spire, pulling onto the summit area and walking around one last remaining snow patch. I setup a quick Anchor consisting of the #4 Camalot and brought Michael up to the top where we unroped and walked over to the highest Boulder we could find. Being that South Early Winter Spire is the tallest pinnacle of the Liberty Bell Massif, the views were a stunning 360 degrees of pure blue sky and creamy white mountains sprinkled with bits of dark rock.
It was about 3:15pm, so with plenty of time left in the day we sat around for 45 minutes and watched the two skiers we had seen in the parking lot climb up to the "Rabbit Ears", where we had just been. I took a bunch of photos and poked fun at the tiny little ants of RV's and cars speeding up the hairpin turn on Highway 20, below us. Several of which seemed to nearly miss colliding as a car tried to pass a slower moving large rectangular box; an RV.
With still no sign of the two skiers who were on the route behind us, we decided it was time to head down and back home to Seattle. We packed up all the gear and I coiled the rope for the short 4th class scramble down the South Arête to the East of the summit. We followed an obvious trail down to the South, once on the arête proper, only stopping to rope up to do a bit of Au Cheval across an exposed boulder with a bolt in the middle of it on the west side. From there it was another hundred feet or so of downclimbing to the first set of rappel slings that lead into the rotten groove that makes up the lower portion of the South Arête route. Four rappels later we were at the col that splits the east and west sides of the Liberty Bell Massif to the South.
Hearing some noise, Michael turned around and looked up to see a mountain goat scrambling up to the climbers right of where we descended. We watched it walk back and forth, up and down, as though it was stuck on it's perch with no place safe to go. Then I saw a coil of rope come shooting out of the crevice to the right of where it stood and realized that the two skiers had startled it. I had never seen a mountain goat so confused or desperate while climbing up rocky terrain. For a few moments I thought it might try jumping to it death down the East Face in a last attempt to escape the two skiers that it was being terrorized by.
I made my way back to my pack, which was being staunchly guarded by a scrawny K-9 that was desperate to see it's owner. As I grabbed my pack and pulled my harness and gear off, the two skiers appeared around the corner, just behind Michael, who had already taken his equipment off. They too, had been startled by the mountain goat, which seemed a fitting trade for what the poor goat had to go through. I finished putting everything in my backpack and jumped down from the ledge we began the climb on, into the snow that was now about as soft as some homemade mashed potatoes.
As the two skiers geared up for their descent, Michael and I briefly discussed doing a glissade, to which I concurred. The next thing I knew, we were both sliding down the hill on our behinds towards the trees in the basin below. Expecting to be passed by the skiers at any moment, we half walked, half ran all the way back through the forest down to the road. Though it had taken us a little more than an hour to reach the base of the climb, it took less than fifteen minutes of galloping and sliding to get back to the highway. All the while, I still had the permanent smile that I had put on at the beginning of the day.
North Cascades Panoramic