Observation Rock - North Face

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Observation Rock, a satellite peak on Rainier at the base of ptarmigan ridge has a very nice late season ice route on it. In fact the entire surrounding area holds many short steep bare ice climbs. We set out at dawn from the Mowich lake trailhead and returned by around 5pm, a great day trip with awesome views to say the least.

Follow the trail up into Spray Park and then veer right (south) off the trail into old moraines and scree. Head for the obvious snow fingers coming down from the North face. These snow fields run for about 1,000 feet of low angled snow/ice up to a scree bench at the base of the true climbing. From here you can climb many differing lines of varying steepness on the 400 foot wide face. Our route began on the right side, climbing a short step to 50 degrees of bare ice, and then relaxing to 45 degrees on frozen snow/ice. At mid-face, two pitches or so, the face steepens to 50-55 degrees and becomes bare of snow again. Two more very solid ice pitches follow, up to 60 degrees near the top.

The face lets out onto a flat basin below the summit where you have two options. First, you could climb up the scree/snow finish to the North face, or contour around and ascend the West ridge on scree/snow. The other option is to bypass the summit and head left (east) to a col. and easily descend the NE side of the mountain. We chose the west ridge ascent because it gave some beautiful close up views of the Mowich face and ptarmigan ridge routes on Rainier.

There is also excellent skiing in this area, so if you can bare to huff the skis up there…

We climbed in mid October and there was about 5 inches of fresh powder. The area is probably very wintery now, and probably all but the upper face is covered in snow. September-October is the best time of year to get bare ice conditions in this area.

The overall elevation gain is over 4000 feet, but worth the effort. Beware the "descending" trail down from Mowich Lake, it’s a pain to come back up at the end of the day!