[TR] La Croupe du Poney 06/14/2025

[RobUSA]

On Saturday, June 14th, Kelly Ryan and I climbed a rock buttress in the Washington Pass area, based only on photographs I had taken of that rock buttress a couple of weeks prior.  It has 1000′ of mostly moderate and enjoyable granite climbing, with trees available for almost every belay station. The route is solidly Grade III in size. We swung leads for eight long pitches, where I led the odds and Kelly led the evens. We estimate that maybe one pitch was 5.9, and a number of others were 5.7 / 5.8, but there certainly were factors that could have led us to over-estimating difficulties at the time, so it's possible those difficulties will get downgraded upon the arrival of more opinions. There is a walk-off from the top, which returns to the route’s base.  We took a lot of extra time dealing with the details of the unknown here, but with the beta now known, I imagine par for the course could be 12 to 13 hours car-to-car for this moderate route.

It's hard to know if this is a new first ascent or not.  We definitely climbed it in the style of a first ascent; and despite a lot of searching, I've yet to find conclusive proof that the particular line we climbed has been previously climbed in its entirety.  Whatever the case may be, I'm rather proud of our little effort here!

More details in this write-up:  https://rocknropenw.com/2025/06/17/la-croupe-du-poney/

Edited 7 hours ago by RobUSA