[TR] Wine Spires - Silver Star and Chablis Spire 06/23/2018

[AlecE]

Trip: Wine Spires - Silver Star and Chablis Spire

Trip Date: 06/23/2018

Trip Report:

My roommate and I had been looking to get into the North Cascades for a while but hadn’t been able to put a trip together. We finally got the chance this last weekend and drove from Portland up to Mazama on Thursday night. We got warmed up on the Liberty Bell and Concord Tower on Friday and decided that we wanted to camp somewhere high and pretty Saturday night. After a lot of back and forth, we decided to camp up near the Wine Spires and climb Chablis Spire. We started around noon on Saturday and make the trek up to the Burgandy Col. It took about three hours from the car to the camp, so we dropped our stuff and went over to Silver Star Mountain.

 

View of the Liberty Bell group

 

Not a bad campsite. 

There was still snow up on the east side of Burgandy Col, but it was pretty soft and made for easy going over to the Silver Star glacier. We didn’t know too much about the glacier, so we decided to rope up, which probably wasn’t necessary. Made it up to the top of the glacier and had a nice view into the Cascades.

 

Snagtooth Ridge from the Glacier

 

We opted out of the scramble to the true summit and turned around and headed back towards camp. We made some dinner and enjoyed a beautiful sunset and the view.

You can see Glacier Peak hanging out in the distance.

 

 

 

A few goats also decided that they liked the col campsite, and kept us company throughout the night.

 

 

 

Not too early of a start and we headed down to the base of the Chablis Spire. There were a few cracks open on the snowfield below the base, so we roped up again and headed up the snow to the base of the route. The detached block is center left of this photo. 

The snow was still fairly high, so the “handrail” at the base of the route was still covered, so we started at a hand ramp up to the detached block. After an airy step-around (very awkward) and a cool short finger crack we headed up three pitches of wandering easy climbing. There’s a short unprotectable slab in the middle of the second pitch, to which Carmen managed to find a 5.11 finger crack variation. The last pitch ends at the notch between the bunny ears summits, and we climbed up to the true summit still roped up. It turns out there’s some rap anchors right at the summit, so we were able to rap off the top, which was nice.

 

Looking down from the last pitch.

Obligatory awkward summit selfie. 

 

5 wandery 60 m raps brought us back to the snow. We headed up to the col, grabbed our overnight gear, and suffered through the long descent back to the car. After a quick hop in the Methow River and a burger and a beer in town, we made the haul back to Portland.

 

 

Gear Notes:
Single rack to 4, 60m rope, glacier gear

Approach Notes:
Park at the mile marker 166, find a log to cross the river, and then hike the well worn path to Burgandy Col.