[TR] Jaberwocky Tower- East Face 6/26/2004

[ivan]

Climb: Jaberwocky Tower-East Face

 

Date of Climb: 6/26/2004

 

Trip Report:

a fun warm up for an outing into the stuart range that culminated w/ the climbing of serp arete on dragontail and the complete north ridge (east variation)on stuart

 

the iranian sensation and i made our way up to colchuck lake after supplicating the appropriate federal officials in fake-town (and reversing course back to seattle 30 minutes after leaving upon recollecting that both of us had left our climbing harnesses drying in josh's garage)...the intention was to climb colchuck balanced, dragontail, and colchuck all in one trip, then make it back to l-worth 2 days later and do somethign w/ the might joshk...all this shit was to get fucked up...this is life by design

 

from the end of the lake, the approach was an unpleasant mix of traversing on scree to intense hand-to-hand combat w/ slide alder. emerging victorious, though somewhat wounded, from the thickets we forged steepily uphill toward colchuck balanced, going up the second left gully to reach the tower about half-way uphill from the lake to the balanced rock.

 

we reached the notch between tower and slope around 5 pm and quickly dispatched the climbing, a long pitch, traversing an easy ledge then climbing a big chimney to the summit. rated at 5.fun, the climb is still a long way to go for minimal pay-off; at any rate, it beat sitting round camp for a few hours just waiting for the morning, though it did dissuade us from returning and going further uphill to do colchuck balanced. the route doesn't look to get much traffic, as the usual nest of slings were thin and ratty. the summit was a terrific place to hoot and holler at the locals thronged round the jeweled lake.

 

by dark we were back down to camp, watered and fed for serpentine arete the next day

 

Gear Notes:

small climbing rack

 

Approach Notes:

traversing scree slog, slide-alder bar fight, steepish rubble rising

[Szyjakowski]

sweet...any pictures?

[ivan]

in time...i had a ghetto-cam i gotta develop first

[forrest_m]

comparing colchuck bal. rock to jabberwocky tower is kinda like your elizabeth hurley/present-day-liz-taylor comparison (in the stuart TR)... w. face of CBR is one of the best "rock climbs in an alpine setting" around, as good as s. face prusik IMHO.

 

on the liz taylor thing, am i the only one who grew up thinking of her as the ultimate shriveled up old hollywood bat only to be SHOCKED when i started watching old movies and realized what an incredible babe the young liz taylor was?

 

[ivan]

i agree w/ your comparision...cbr looks most fun and inviting, but since we didn't get to the lake till afternoon the day of our approach, we didn't feel we had enough time to climb it and be back down in time for a serious climb the next day. and yet we didn't want to just sit around the lake for the whole afternoon. in the end, i regreted this climb because it did throw us off doing the better one up that way. it would have been better to have either started the hike in much earlier or much later.

[ivan]

pictures!

 

so there's jaberwocky tower on the left, well guarded by scree and slide alder

the top out of the east ledges, just above the 5.6 chimney

the terror of tehran, the fighting farsi, mr. aarash sofla on the summit w/ dragontail and colchuck back there

dragontail from the rappel ledge...good view of all 3 (albeit dried out) triple couliors