[TR] Liberty Bell- Liberty Crack 6/4/2005

[baldwin]

Climb: Liberty Bell-Liberty Crack

 

Date of Climb: 6/4/2005

 

Trip Report:

Ben Long and I climbed Liberty Crack on Saturday. It was beautiful weather. We started climbing at 6am. Just about 20-30 feet of snow at the base. Climbed the route using the topo at http://www.stanford.edu/~clint/wa/libcrack.gif

Superfun long climb with great views. We got to the top at 4pm. Sunbathed and enjoyed the view for a while then headed home.

 

Gear Notes:

One 60m rope

One set of cams from #1 TCU to #4 camalot except for double #1 cammalot and lots of nuts.

[John Frieh]

 

Cam hooks are your friend!

[ryanl]

Nice job! You guys must have been climbing fast. Were you swapping leads or leading in blocks?

[Gary_Yngve]

Knowing both of them, I'd say it is highly likely that Baldwin led it in one long block. Though it is possible Ben might have led one or two of the easier pitches.

[thelawgoddess]

nice work!

[Guest]

Liberty Bell –Liberty Crack Route

June 4th

 

Baldwin Goodell and I set out for Washington Pass Friday afternoon, June 3rd. There was plenty of pigging out on the 3 hour drive in, including some killer gourmet burgers courtesy of Baldwin’s wife. We arrived at pass and scoped out the small pond on the right side of freeway that signals the start of the trail. We camped overnight in a campground down the road and I was immediately in love with Baldwin’s van, he popped the top, plugged in the propane, turned up the radio, and set out the door mat and we were asleep by 10:30.

 

3:45 rolled around and we got up, cooked some oatmeal and drove over to the trailhead. We lost the trail in about 5 minutes and the next 45 were just a straight shot to the base of the climb, a most delightfully easy approach! We started the first pitch at 5:45 just above a thick flake pretty much directly below the Lithuanian roof.

 

Baldwin lead up this pitch with his colorful etriers. He continued up to a belay station right below the roof. The first pitch of trying to learn to Jumar I managed to get in every position except upward, but eventually found my rhythm and made it up. Baldwin then took off up over the roof with more grace than I had on the Jumars, which kept getting twisted around my daisy chain. I followed up to the roof with the Jumars and had to jump only one carabiner with the top Jumar in order to clean it. There is a nice bold under the roof that makes this easier.

 

Baldwin lead up another thin pitch above the roof that looked pretty sparse and also had a skyhook move. I watched him curse as the hook kept popping off the hold before he put his weight on it, scary stuff. But he eventually found a stable position for it and daintily stepped up, I couldn’t help cheering him on. Then before I knew it I was belaying at the third station and Baldwin was freeing his way up the 3rd ptch, a long 5.9 hand crack (for someone with tiny hands).

 

We got to the belay station for the fourth pitch, a 160 foot 5.8 hand crack. Before he set out Baldwin stopped to consult with me, “so are we committing? I think we should go for it.” The weather looked great, the time was early (it was about 9:30?, and it had been about an hour and twenty minutes per pitch, but we figured the hard parts and the aiding were over, although some French freeing was still in order), “yeah lets go for it!” Baldwin lead up the long crack, I put away the Jumars and followed, it felt so good to be free climbing again.

 

Baldwin lead up yet again on pitch 5, up to the scary flake where he somehow got up over another overhanging belay station that took all the yarding I could muster to pull myself up and over, an uber impressive finish to that lead. I belayed from the triad of shitty bolts to the left of the scary flake, also attached to an old piton driven in on the right side of the flake. This was by far the coolest belay station, metaphorically and physically too, it was shaded by the flake in a sort of alcove with nothing but air below and the moment Baldwin set out around the flake and up, he was out of sight. As I belayed and shivered I started to get worried, the rope had not moved for a long time, occasionally it went slack, then taught, then slack, but little forward progress was being made. At this point we were committed, only one way to go… up. What if he couldn’t pull off this pitch? I forced myself to just enjoy the views and reminded myself that this was the reason we set out at the butt-crack of dawn. Not wanting to distract Baldwin, I waited and watched the views. As half an hour rolled by and my imagination got the better of me I finally called out to Baldwin, “Are you ok?” and was overjoyed by the response, “yeah just figuring it out!”. Phew, I guess progress doesn’t always mean rope travel. Shortly after that he did figure it out. I followed up quickly and it turned out to be a friction slab with a tiny right hand corner crack that fit a finger or two. It looked hard to protect and Baldwin said he took a route to the left side of the slab, which looked very tough indeed to me as I stuck to the right. This must have been the “5.9 move”. With my couple fingers in the crack and a trusted top belay I was over the friction moves in no time.

 

We set up a gear belay at the alternate spot on pitch 7 and Baldwin ran out the next two pitches up to the “5.0 pitch 10” skipping the regular sloping edge belay. Those two pitches, the chimneying and then the hand crack, were quite enjoyable freeing and I was wishing I had asked to lead at that point. A little late, I agreed to lead that last pitch of 5.0 which had a couple fun moves and much more potential for decking than anything we had previously done. I brought Baldwin up to the tree at pitch 11, the “fourth class”, which is actually a nice trail and we unroped and scrambled up, reaching the summit at 4pm.

 

We encountered a group of Mounties on the summit who had taken the Becky route and I asked if I could get my basic climbing class rock credit but they seemed pretty grumpy/annoyed about that subject so I eventually dropped it. Baldwin and I hung out at the top for awhile, scoping out the wicked wall of clouds converging on the mountains to the west. Baldwin, in the spirit of true climbers, was curiously importuning our summit neighbors about the names of the nearby peaks so that he could formulate his next adventure. I was just relaxing, exploring the summit blocks, and snapping pictures.

 

After about 45 minutes we leisurely started descending, but as I should have guessed, letting the Mounties go first was a lapse on my part. We waited for the rappel anchors for just a bit and I got to watch the two rangers that were also up there do a two person rappel, one on each side of the rappel rope, never seen that done before and it looked pretty awkward. We got down to the notch where the Mounties group was dislodging rocks with a passion and we passed them on the far side of the gully as quickly as possible without sending down rocks ourselves. We also encountered a patchy mountain goat with a curious expression beneath his wise goatee that said, “Do you belong here? Because you sure are making it look hard coming down this gully.”

 

An hour later saw us on the road at about 6:30 with our thumbs up. We got a quick ride up to the van, split up gear, and took off for home, stopping only for subway and Krispee Kremes. All in all a glorious day on a classic route.

 

Note: Most of the pitches are pretty well sandbagged, the 5.9 cracks are more like 5.10 and there are definitely some spicy moves. I would add about .2 to each pitch and not hesitate to yard on gear. The last two cracks however are rated about right and I would have asked to lead them had I known they weren’t nearly as sandbagged as the previous ones. On most of the pitches I was up in 15-25 minutes. Following was pretty cake, leading however ate up the hours with route finding, aiding, getting by sketchy moves etc. Our total time was 10 hours on 11 pitches because Baldwin is “The Man.”

[tomtom]

Note: Most of the pitches are pretty well sandbagged, the 5.9 cracks are more like 5.10 and there are definitely some spicy moves. I would add about .2 to each pitch and not hesitate to yard on gear.

 

Nope, sorry. This ain't the gym, college boy.

[fourteenfour]

awesome work. a dream route for next year.