After our original plans to climb near Washington Pass were thwarted by wildfires, Jeremy and I spent about an hour flipping through guidebooks and trying to decide what to do. After considering various options we settled on the West Face of Colchuck Balanced Rock. This was a good choice as the route is amazing: splitter crack-climbing in a splitter alpine setting! We each led half the pitches: I took pitch 1 and 5-8, while Jeremy led 2-4 and the final few hundred feet to the summit.

The route climbs the center of the face, with 5.11 pitches up the corner to the huge triangular roof, and out the left side of the roof:

Jeremy leads pitch 3 (5.9)

The incredible corner pitch, probably the best single crack pitch I have ever climbed (11a)

here's a video of Jeremy following the pitch.

The belay under the roof is wildly exposed, with a perfect view of Stuart.

The spectacularly airy traverse pitch (11a)

Pitch 7, perfect splitter 5.9-5.10 handcrack with an A1 or 5.12 roof. I took a fall onto a slightly sketchy fixed nut trying to lead the roof and ended up aiding it, but I was psyched to onsight everything else on the route. The moves felt doable (probably easier than 5.12).

Jeremy at the top of pitch 8, an overhanging flared chimney which is rated 5.8 or 5.9 in the guidebooks but felt like solid 5.10 to me.

We continued toward the summit, and hiked out. We lost an hour or two on the descent: it's pretty brushy if you don't traverse at the right spot so we had to backtrack. If you have an altimeter, cut across at exactly 6,000 feet. Then we drove back to Seattle. This is the best "pure" rock climb I have done in Washington, and I'll probably do it again some time!