Mt Washington - Chimney of Space into West Ridge 7/20/2008
Trip: Mt Washington - Chimney of Space into West Ridge
Date: 7/20/2008
Trip Report:I’ve been meaning to climb Mt Washington for some but there have always found reasons not to. Finding an open weekend on my hands, I called Bernie to see if he was up for “...a quick alpine rock climb... I read that there actually is some decent rock on Mt Washington if you just know where to look”, well that’s how they all start, right?
Sunday July 20th I met Bernie @ his place around 6AM for the 3 hour drive down – after a quick coffee and some packing, we were off. The weather was looking perfect and I figured we would be up and back in time to toss something on the grill for dinner. We got to the Big Lake campground, parked, sorted gear, loaded up and started hiking 9:30. At this point I began to notice the mosquitoes but used some deet and was able to ignore them. We hiked about 20 minutes before we realized that we had parked in the wrong location (there were road closed signs but apparently that was for a different road). After hiking the extra mileage and taking time to figure out the trails, it was 10:30 before we hit the climbers trail cutting off of the PCT. Fine, no worries, so we are a little behind but we are on a good trail and ready for the climb... that is, until the trail disappeaeds under the snow. No worries, we know the general direction so off we go! Let me say that usually when you use the words “bushwhacking” and “Bernie” in the same sentence, you are probably already knee deep in an adventure – that said, we made decent progress hauling up what we figured out was the north ridge the hard way. After about an hour, we managed to meet back up with the trail as it came up on the west side of the north ridge... and our first real view of the mountain since the lake. It was a nice site but dang it seemed far away, especially for all the bushwhacking! No worries, we were back on the trail and our goal was now in sight! Oh, it was now about 12:00... hmmmmm...
The ridge was nice, the weather beautiful and we made progress. Our goal was the NW face to climb either the “excellent” West Face route (5.6) or the “joy to climb” (5.8+) Central Pillar (descriptions from Oregon High). At 1:45 we were having lunch in front of the face and debating which route to actually climb. I was leaning towards the Central Pillar but since we left the #4 in the car (the one sentence I missed in the description down at the car), Bernie got his pick... King Rat (5.9+).
I climbed the first scramble pitch to some sling anchors and got the first look @ all the climbs close up... “Hey Bernie... I dunno... King Rat looks waaaay harder than a 9+... and the one good flake you need looks like it’s going to pop just by looking at it...” as to which Bernie responds, “mmmmm, bring me up, it can’t be that hard!” Let me say that Bernie is a persistent climber and I’ve seen him do some amazing (and very crazy) things, but I can honestly say I have never seen him down climb as fast as he did as that flake did everything but drop when he committed to it! So on to the next line!
Bernie getting a wake up call!
More discussion about Central Pillar, which didn’t really look all that much of a “joy to climb” so we decided to do Chimney of Space (5.8) which tops out into the top pitches of West Ridge. At this point, all I can say is ratings definitely don’t account for loose manky rock! Bernie took the next pitch and got about 40 feet up before figuring out that we only had 9 slings (seemed like enough to me!) unfortunately this was right in the middle of the first off width section. Luckily, he was able to build a decent anchor out of a downward facing rusty old piton and 2 cams jammed between some questionable flakes (let me say, everything up there was questionable!) and brought me up...
At this point, I’m going to gloss over some of the details to protect the innocent but suffice it to say that that belay station was scary! After much rope management, breath holding, praying and generally keeping myself out of mortal danger I was able to grab the rack and take off for my pitch (#3)...
This was actually a fun off width pitch with some good holds spaced far enough to keep it exciting. The stemming was pretty solid and if you were careful not to pull on the loose stuff, somewhat protectable. I topped out on a small pillar (which moved and would probably crash down if yarded on), set another anchor and brought Bernie up. Bernie took the next pitch (#4 and the last on Chimney of Space) which took us out back into the sun and to the top 2 pitches of West Ridge which were 5.4ish but really fun to climb! If the bottom of the West Ridge is anything like the top (but harder) it might actually be worth the slog up and across the scree field.
We topped out, rapped down the North Ridge and were back to our packs before 6. The rest of the trip was somewhat uneventful except for when I lost my balance on a snow slope (and consequently slid into a large rock with my tailbone), losing the trail, again (there is still a lot of snow up there... glad we had a compass) and dealing with mosquitoes that seemed to drink deet like it was tequila on a Saturday night! With the extended hike, we got back to the car @ 8:15, Aleve’ed up by 8:16, on the road by 8:30 and back to Portland by 11:30! All in all a fun trip – though I can’t wait to get on some real rock again!
pics from trip... Cheers --
//ray
Gear Notes:more deet...
Approach Notes:park at the LAST parking lot!
