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Chianti Spire, East Face


forrest_m

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Chianti Spire, East Face

7/16, 2000

Summary: Dan Aylward and Forrest Murphy climbed the East Face of Chianti Spire (III, 5.10b) in just under 12 hours car-to-car. The route is one of the best in the Washington Pass area, very solid and much more sustained that is typical on an alpine rock climb. Even the 5.8 pitches are continuous 5.8, rather than low fifth class with the occasional hard move!

Sorting the rack at the pullout below Burgundy Col trail, I couldn’t find the #3 Camalot. We did some reconstruction and figured out that the last time we’d seen it, Dan had used it for the anchor on the summit of Juno Tower the afternoon before. Shit. We were a bit nervous about doing Chianti Spire with only one big piece, since the topo indicated several 5.10 offwidth sections, but we figured we’d get by somehow. At around 6:30, we dropped down from the road cut, crossed the stream, and started up the trail. I’d forgotten how steep it was; along with the Eldorado Creek approach, it is the archetypal Cascades climbers’ trail. Just over two hours of steep trail and loose sand brought us to Burgundy col. We dropped down 80 feet on snow, then traversed the top of the small bowl below Burgundy Spire to another pass, then turned the corner of the rock buttress above and approached the East Face of Chianti spire directly. The face looked awesome, and big; the upper pitches were blindingly obvious, following a continuous crack system directly up the center of the smooth headwall beneath the summit. Getting to the headwall was less clear; there appeared to be a steep angling dihedral leading in from the right, but followed the base of what appeared to be a steep wall of poor quality rock and looked intimidatingly wide.

After gearing up balanced on the narrow crest of the burgshrund, Dan led off and I followed him up. Dan was set up at the base of a looming wide crack, almost a chimney, that went straight up for 20 feet before leaning back above. “I have some bad news,” Dan reported: the only piece in the belay was the #4 Camalot. I digested this as I stared up at the maw above. Well, it would have only fit at the top... I started up and after a body length or so was able to fiddle a yellow alien blindly into a fissure within one wall of the crack. Face holds on the right wall allowed me to mostly stay out of the crack. The rock was interestingly different on the two faces of the dihedral; the back wall was mustard colored, with almost no quartz content and yielded frequent incut handholds. The left wall was a separate formation of compact granite, more stable but less broken. The two didn’t quite meet, forming the aforementioned ugly slot. Stemming high, I was able to get one leg above the lip of the offwidth and move up onto the slab above. I followed the corner up for another 80 feet, continuing to combine stems and smears to link the better rock. I finally pulled up onto more broken ground and quickly ran out another 50 feet of low fifth class terrain as the corner dissolved into a series of ledges. Dan’s next pitch traversed around two corners, about 40 feet, to a beautiful triangular ledge with a fixed anchor of bolts and pins.

I cast off into the crack system above. It was generally hand sized, but formed in butt-cheek style, with crumbly lips and sandy smears. After the initial difficult moves, the rock quality improved and a good stance appeared. I shook out and pulled past a small roof. The crack began to round out, but another crack angled in from the right, providing solid sidepulls. Handholds got thinner as the two cracks converged; the 5.10 crux was highstepping onto a small patch of grass at the crossing, without much positive for the hands. Above, the two cracks merged into a single clean fistcrack. I fired in a #2 and climbed 25 feet up to a small stance below the menacing offwidth above. I fiddled for a while with anchors, trying to save the big cam for the next pitch, and finally got something I was happy with as I set up a semi-hanging belay using three equalized aliens and the quarter-inch bolt. The 4 inch crack above was scary looking, but obviously ended in a ledge after only 20 feet. Dan edged upwards, working in two cams into a small crack on the right, while sliding the #4 up above himself in the offwidth on the left. Towards the top, the difficulty eased off as you were forced to get directly into the crack, and then an easy mantle move put you onto a nice ledge with a fixed anchor.

The offwidth continued above, but the incut of the ledge added a nice dihedral, so upwards progress got a lot easier. Dan continued up, getting creative with his gear; at one point 10 feet of old rope extended out of the crack where someone’s rappel rope had gotten stuck, and he clipped a draw into a knot tied near its frayed end. The climbing remained challenging but nowhere near as hard as the previous sections. I joined him 40 feet below the top, and led up through a few more 5.8 moves to a two-bolt fixed anchor just below the summit block. We took turns belaying each other to the top, 10 feet of unprotected 5.7, and we laughed at the old ring bolt on the summit block. From the bolts, we rapped 60 meters down, then downclimbed a full 200-foot pitch on lower angle terrain to a ledge with a small tree. At this point, we were directly above our packs. Another full rope rappel almost reached the snow; we rapped the final 40 feet off a knot wedged in the crack, got our shoes on, and were back at Burgundy col within an hour of leaving the summit.

We ate and filled the bottles with snow, and seeing as how we had plenty of daylight still, prepared for the final challenge. Dan geared up for sprinting, carrying water and little else, and took off to run the ridge in search of our lost cam. It seemed like you could traverse as far as Juno tower without having to descend too far, then cut diagonally back down to intersect the trail. He ended up accidentally climbing Aries Tower, the next peak west and downclimbing its 5.4 east ridge, but didn’t have too much navigation trouble. I loaded Dan’s pack with both ropes and the rack and put everything light in my pack, which I then strapped to the outside, and set off down the slope carrying all the gear. I think he may well have gotten the better of the deal; it took him longer, but he got to do the knee-crunching descent carrying a quart of water, his rock shoes and a couple of cam units.

 

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