Liberty Crack (V 5.10 A2) with Eric: 6/26/05

Washington Pass is the place to be for laid-back cragging.  Sure, it's technically "alpine" but this is easy to forget with the short approaches, high-quality granite, and mellow descents.  So of course the Pass's ultimate longer route, the 10-pitch Liberty Crack, has been on my to-do list for a while.

This photo shows the spires of Washington Pass.  Liberty Bell is the tower on the right of the photo; Liberty Crack climbs up the center of its face.

The forecast called for nice weather during the day but with afternoon thunderstorms.  So we decided to get an early start, and to bring a second rope in case the weather got nasty.

We got up at 3:30am, and started hiking by 4:00.  After the super-easy 30 minute approach, we arrived at the base of the route.

We started climbing at 5:15am.  I left the aid gear behind for the first pitch, which is supposedly 5.11, since I could always do a couple of french-free moves if needed.  This pitch felt much easier than 5.11: more like mid-5.10.  There are a couple of not-too-difficult stemming moves at the start (a couple of the footholds were wet  but I was able to dry them off with my chalk-ball).  And in the crack proper, there is one balance move (also not particularly difficult) with a fixed piton at waist level.  As a standard of comparison, the 5.11- finger crack on the West Face of North Early Winters Spire is much more difficult.

Eric follows pitch 1:

Pitch 2 has the famous Lithuanian Lip, which is aid (or 5.13 free).  Eric french-freed on fixed gear to the bolt under the roof, then made a big reach to a fixed piton at the lip.  From there, this cool etrier back-step put him in position to turn the lip.

This is me following the pitch.  Eric only placed 3 pieces during this 100-foot aid pitch, the rest is entirely fixed!! This made it go by fairly quickly.

I then started up the next 100+ foot aid pitch. 

This pitch started out with a bunch of reasonably solid fixed gear.  Here is one fixed piece that I found sort of weird: a hex that was hammered in sideways and with one broken cable that was then tied in a knot.  All of the fixed gear looked decent, and there were a number of bolts on the pitch.  Even if a fixed piece did fail, it would likely be possible to place something else in its absence.  For example, the feature in this photo would probably take a cam if the hex did pull. 

Higher on the pitch, there is a hook move that can easily be skipped by top-stepping (I actually skipped the hook move AND the small nut move after it--being tall definitely helps for aid).

Looking down at the end of the pitch.  The last stretch of the pitch, visible here, is a nice 5.10 finger crack.  I always have trouble switching mid-pitch from aid to free-climbing, but I was able to save some time by stashing the aiders on the back of my harness and french-freeing this section.

Eric does some barefooted ascending.

The first 3 pitches took 4 hours; the rest of the climb is all free-climbing so it was nice to know that we could move more quickly for the remaining pitches.

Eric starts up pitch 4, a nice 5.9 handcrack with a steep 5.10 move at the top.

Me approaching the 5.10 bulge.

Pitch 5 was a 160 foot 5.8 chimney, which featured fun stemming.

Pitch 6 started with brushy 5.7 climbing to a corner system.

Eric ponders the "rotten block", which was composed of terrible-quality rock.  To avoid kicking down pieces of the block down onto the belayer, he pulled on a fixed piton to surmount its left side.

Pitch 7 started with a really awkward flaring chimney; I had some trouble figuring out how to climb it (felt like awkward 5.10+/11- moves), so I gave up and aided the move.  The rest of the pitch climbed a nice 5.8 slab/corner.

We linked the next two pitches: Eric ended up 10 feet short of  a ledge, so he did a hanging belay for 5 minutes until I got a good belay stance part-way though the pitch, then he moved to the ledge.  Skipping the bolted anchor on pitch 7 and belaying at a higher ledge from gear would have made this part go more smoothly.

From here a really nice 5.9 corner system led upwards.  This section had great exposure and enjoyable moves.

Pitch 10 had a few 5.8 moves, then about 100 feet of easy 5th class climbing.  From here we unroped, stashed our gear, and walked to the summit.  We hit the summit at 3:15pm, for an even 10-hour travel time from the route's base.

It started to drizzle when we were on the summit; and just after we got back to the car it started pouring!! We hung out in the car for a bit, then cruised back to Seattle.

Gear: 2 sets of cams to 2" plus one 3" piece, 1 1/2 sets of nuts (including micro & offsets), 2 60m ropes.

Aid gear: 3 alpine etriers, fifi hook, one daisy chain (not needed because the wall is slabby & featured enough to top-step without daisy tension).  We brought an aid hook but didn't use it.  In any case it might be nice to have a hook in the event that one of the fixed pieces were to fail. 

For following the aid pitches we brought a grigri, one handled ascender and a foot loop tied from webbing.

topo: http://www.stanford.edu/~clint/wa/libcrack.gif It's probably easiest to extend pitch 7 to the optional gear belay, and then climb from there to the p9 belay in one pitch.