Editor’s Note: Blake Herrington is one of few young climbers pushing boundaries in the remote Cascades. Last year he completed a major first on the east ridge of Mt. Goode (read the Mt. Goode´s Megaladon Ridge.), on the heels of establishing the four-peak Gunsight traverse (read the Gunsight Range Traverse). Below, Herrington tells of his latest expedition, to the north face of Castle Peak, where he and Peter Hirst accidentally climbed a new route, Fight or Flight (IV 5.10+, 1,400′).

Fight or Flight (IV 5.10+, 1,400′), north face of Castle Peak, North Cascades, Washington. Blake Herrington and Peter Hirst established the route accidentally on August 3, 2008, while trying to climb the Colorado Route. The Colorado Route lies right of the new climb. [Photo] Blake Herrington collection

The clock on the wall showed 1:30 a.m. as the US border patrol agent sauntered across the office and up to the desk. Under the glare of fluorescent lights and overweight customs officers, having to admit that we’d forgotten a passport suddenly seemed morally equivalent to citing kitten-drowning as a frequent hobby. My climbing partner and I weathered the predictable litany of questions, stated our thoroughly non-terrorist occupations, and tried to deflect verbal blows with a steady return fire of “yes sir” and “no sir.” Unlike the other angry late-night travelers at this remote border crossing, Peter and I displayed an odd satisfaction that seemed as out of place as the ominously smiling portraits of Dick Cheney and George Bush overhead. We knew this passport issue was only a temporary delay, not a real obstacle. Not something that would prevent our progress or do us harm. And to a couple of caffeine-hyped climbers twenty-two hours removed from an alpine start, our late night border interrogation was, in retrospect, the most calming part of our whole day.

Peter Hirst and I had left Bellingham, Washington on the morning of Saturday August 2, and driven several hours to Manning Provincial Park in British Columbia. From here, seven miles of trail brought us to an 8,000′ pass and a gathering rain storm. As the drops became more snow than rain, we caught a view of our objective, the North Face of Castle Peak. From the well-maintained trail, beautiful alpine ridges led directly to the glacier below the peak, and the storm abated in time for us to dry out at camp that evening. We intended to climb the Colorado Route, a (likely unrepeated) 5.11 climb tackling the granitic north face of Castle Peak, just south of the USA/Canada border. Fred Beckey had recruited a trio of Colorado climbers to attempt the project fifteen years ago, but he had stayed at camp due to hip troubles while they completed the climb.

This year a large snow patch lingered at the base of the route, seemingly on top of its first pitches. Armed with an excitement fueled by the visions of clean granite overhead, we decided to simply follow whatever features offered protectable and compelling climbing up the wall. After an exciting wakeup crossing the glacial moat, we began just left of the clean buttress face, climbing across to the top of the snow patch in two pitches. Rising up from the belay was a stretch of some of the cleanest alpine granite I’ve ever seen. Though lacking in long corner or crack systems, the appearance of face holds allayed our fears and we set out hoping for adequate protection. The first pitch off the snow (our third) linked balancy face features, a thin crack, and show-stopper crux moves to the belay ledge. On Pitch 4, Peter started with a long stretch of unprotected but positive face climbing before pulling into the twin cracks of a steep dihedral we’d noticed from the glacier below. From the pedestal above these cracks, face climbing continued up and left to a finger crack which provided good protection as the moves again became more difficult and the route was forced up and around a few left-facing corners to the left-edge of the wall. From the belay at the base of pitch seven, we questioned the route ahead and debated, aloud and internally, how best to proceed. I decided to try straight up the arete above, which began with a long stretch of difficult and nervous climbing where the thought of a fall had me wishing for more than the occasional purple TCU for protection. Peter led the next pitch, finding a fantastic and powerful left-facing corner with difficult but manageable finger locks.

From here the rock became more mossy, especially in the obvious dihedral systems. Luckily we were able to follow flakes and cracks onto to an amazing quartz dyke system. This stripe of bright rock–the golden staircase–carried us on for most of two pitches and provided a continuous line of perfect holds, really fun climbing, and occasional gear. From a small ledge below the summit, Peter used double ropes, our lone ice tool, an overhanging pullup move, and all the tricks in the book to get us up a hidden snow patch and through the final rock wall to the summit.

Our entry into the summit register was the first in 2008 and kept this year on pace with 2006 and 2007, which both also feature one entry. However, it was a good thing that the register couldn’t hold our attention for long. With both of us expected to show up for work the next morning, we soon began the descent to camp and hike out. Hitting the trail as stars emerged, we pounded down the final seven miles to the car–assuring each other that the inventor of the two-day weekend simply could not have been an alpinist.

After some email and photo sharing with the Colorado climbers, it sounds like we were never on their route at all, so now the Central Buttress on Castle Peak has a couple routes awaiting second ascents. Don’t forget your passport.

* Source : – http://www.alpinist.com/ – http://blakeclimbs.blogspot.com/

** Previous story  : – Rock climbing.

** zapraszam na relacje z wypraw polskich himalaistów.

Editor’s Note: Blake Herrington is one of few young climbers pushing boundaries in the remote Cascades. He completed a major first on the east ridge of Mt. Goode (read the Mt. Goode´s Megaladon Ridge.). Below, Herrington tells of his expedition, to the four-peak Gunsight traverse.

In early July, Dan Hilden and I, both from Washington State, made the short trek to one of the most remote spots in the lower-48—the southern end of the Ptarmigan Traverse in Central Washington—to attempt the unclimbed four-peak Gunsight traverse. The peaks are located in the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area near the southern boundary of North Cascades National Park. Despite their difficult-to-reach location, the granite has been called (by Fred Beckey) some of the best in the Cascades.

Getting into the area is an enormous undertaking from any direction, but we chose the “easy” approach that took only two days from the east. Getting to the Gunsights required a fifty-mile boat ride up Lake Chelan, a ten-mile shuttle bus ride, ten miles of hiking by trail and 5,000 feet of vertical, off-trail bushwhacking and glacier travel. Due to high winds this past winter, more than 600 large trees had fallen across the trail, and wilderness restrictions in the area preclude the use of power tools for trail clearing. Consequently Dan and I became expert log climbers on the approach to our camp on the east side of the peaks, just below the Blue glacier.

On the morning of July 9, we circled along the west side of the Gunsight Peaks along the Chickamin glacier to the northern terminus of the ridge. Beginning with a pitch of steep, splitter granite hand cracks, we gained the ridge crest and began climbing north. We completed the traverse of all four named summits: Northeast, North, Middle and South Gunsight (all between 8,000 and 8,200′) by climbing the obvious line. We ascended the north faces on solid rock with good protection and rappelled the south sides.

We encountered three pitches of 5.10 crack climbing; we used one point of aid to pendulum out of a dead-end fist crack near the summit of the North Peak. The lack of a headlamp forced us to do the final pitch on the South peak and the descent, which included a free-hanging rappel over a moat onto the Blue glacier, in almost total darkness.

It is exciting that our route, Gunrunner (IV 5.10 A1, 18 pitches, ca. 1,500′ of gain and .75 miles long), had never been climbed despite the quality of rock and amazing location. Then again, only a handful of climbers are willing to carry heavy gear into such a remote destination. Of the eighteen pitches on Gunrunner, it is possible that only three (in the notch between North Gunsight and Middle Gunsight) had been climbed previously.

We made two other ascents during our trip: a new route, Accidental Discharge (II 5.10, 3 pitches), on the east face of South Gunsight on July 8, and the second ascent of Middle Gunsight’s east face (III 5.10d, 7 pitches) on July 10. Avoid Accidental Discharge unless you are looking for a broken, scary offwidth/chimney/dike.

Dan Hilden and myself have a combined age of just forty-one, less than half as old as Fred Beckey, whose 1940 first ascent signature still resides in the tiny register atop North Gunsight.

* Source : – http://www.alpinist.com/ – http://blakeclimbs.blogspot.com/

** Previous story  : – Rock climbing.

** zapraszam na relacje z wypraw polskich himalaistów.

Editor’s Note: Blake Herrington is one of few young climbers pushing boundaries in the remote Cascades. He completed the first traverse of the Gunsight Range in the Cascades of Washington State (read the Gunsight Range Traverse). Below, Herrington tells of his expedition (summer 2007), to the the east ridge of Mt. Goode.

Earlier this summer Dan Hilden and I decided to begin a major enchainment with a trip up the unclimbed east ridge of Mt. Goode (9,220′), a peak in Washington’s North Cascades National Park. The peak is frequented because of the famous Beckey route on its north side (Northeast Buttress: IV 5.5). Grossly underestimating the size of the east ridge, we bailed after completing only a few pitches of the route.

Ambition is a good thing, and for a climber, maybe even a necessary thing. However, once I realized just how big Goode’s east ridge was—and after we made an exposed ten-rappel descent down an unclimbed, unknown face—I began questioning my ambition. But thoughts of this “big fish” would not go away. So Sol Wertkin and I, both from Bellingham, WA, returned to Mt. Goode on September 5, with an eye on climbing the line.

Goode’s brittle rock does not have a stellar reputation. Nevertheless, it is amazing that such a major line on one of the range’s largest peaks had not been climbed. Most pictures don’t do the scale and exposure justice—the route is long and committing, with 5,000 feet of exposure to the north and 4,000 to the south. True to its reputation, much of the rock is “distinctly alpine,” but the harder pitches offer excellent gneiss.

Sol had dubbed it the Megalodon Ridge, in honor of the largest fish ever to swim the seas, and on this attempt, unlike my initial foray, we came fully equipped—with the right hardware and weather forecast—for a demanding, grade IV/V route.

Although the tallest peak in the park, Mt. Goode cannot be seen from any road. After hiking twelve miles along the Pacific Crest Trail we reached the north fork of Bridge Creek, which deposited us below slide-alder thickets, hidden cliff bands, and rumbling glaciers 6,000 feet below Mt. Goode’s summit.

We soloed some fifth class rock along the east ridge that night to where the vertical terrain began. The next morning on September 6, we began climbing from our exposed bivy 4,000 vertical feet below the summit. Clouds passed overhead and occasionally allowed glimpses of looming gendarmes and the distant summit. After two hours of simulclimbing, we made one 50-meter rappel from the first tower of the ridge. From there Sol and I swapped leads and did running belays along the crest of exposed gneiss, finding climbing up to 5.8. As we neared the headwall of the southeast peak, the rock steepened abruptly and the climbing became more difficult. The direct line on the crest yielded two pitches of 5.10 crack climbing, and we afforded ourselves the luxury of a ten-minute break atop the southeast peak, the only such one we would take all day. From that sub-summit we scouted a path around the high glacial ice, and climbed through a moat atop the Goode Glacier to reach more technical rock that headed to the main summit.

The final crux of the day came when we attempted to descend into Black Tooth Notch, the last major gap before the summit. The traversing nature of this pitch prevented a rappel, forcing Sol to downlead an overhanging pitch of 5.10, which I, moments before, had dismissed as an option that “would not go.” My initial reluctance to lead the pitch meant that I now had to follow the downclimb across an overhanging face, with 5,000′ of snow and rock beneath my heels. Using perfect beta, which Sol shouted to me as I climbed, I was able to reach his sheltered belay alcove, and after a few more pitches of easier climbing we were on the summit, just as the sun was setting.

Our adventure on Megalodon Ridge (IV+ 5.10, 12 hours of climbing, simuling up to 5.8) was topped with an amazing sunset, a meteor shower and a perfect bivy: that night our heads were the highest point in North Cascades National Park.

The next day we took the standard descent via Black Tooth Notch and the southwest gully. This descent brought us to the south side of the peak and meant that we would have to skirt a forest fire and endure twenty miles of trail before reaching the car. For that ridge—or for any number of other unclimbed objectives, of which there are plenty—the long day of tramping is entirely worth it.

* Source : – http://www.alpinist.com/ – http://blakeclimbs.blogspot.com/

** zapraszam na relacje z wypraw polskich himalaistów.