independence route on liberty bell

[forrest_m]

Anyone done it? I’m wondering how sustained the aid sections are, i.e. do we treat this like a ‘lil big wall or is it more of a long free route with a few aid sections? (Yeah, I know, it goes free at 12.something with cruxes protected by small brass nuts. So we won’t be doing that.)

 

TIA.

[Matt_Anderson]

Depends what you climb at . . .

 

If you can climb consistent .11a and are ok with switching between free and aid, you clould probably get by with ounly a couple of 20 foot sections of aid. If you're not climbing .11a well, it'll be a long day of aid.

 

I don't remember the pitch numbers perfectly, but here's the best I can do . . .

 

First pitch or two - free climbing up to .10 or so - whatever the topo says,

 

First hard pitch - supposed to be .11c. I was scared shitless, my guess is that you would have to throw in some free climbing with the aid, because the crack peters out at a point. At any rate, if you just want to aid the scary section, you could climb the rest of the pitch at .11a and only aid about 20 feet. Youll know when you're there - the pro goes away.

 

Second hard pitch - giveaway pitch and a lot of fun. Easier free climbing than the rating, it would be a shame to aid it. If you aid the whole thing, you'd climb a whole lot of aid - its long.

 

The .12 pitch (.11d?)a lot of .11a, and like the first hard pitch, a 10 - 20 foot section of the business. Pro is there.

 

We rapped b/f the last .11b pitch so I don't know about the rest.

 

Have fun!

trip report!

[erik]

noce work forrest!!!

 

answeered some questions of mine!!

[Matt_Anderson]

Nice Job Forrest! Thanks for the report - always nice to hear someone else's impressions. Nice job on that thin seam on Pitch 5 - I thought the pro would be hard free or aid. . ..

 

Sorry I forgot about that harder move on pitch 4 or so - I think I remember it now . . . Did it pull over a small roof?

 

Sucks about the headlamp. ..

 

Matt

[TimL]

Matt or Forrest - What type of rack would you reccomend for this route if mostly free climbing? Doubles in cams to 2 set of nuts and RPs?

[Matt_Anderson]

Yeah, you're right, doubles of cams, normal nuts and bring as many micro nuts as you got. We brought 2 or three of the #3-6 black diamond copper steels and they did us well. I was happy I had my loweballs (red and blue). I own no offsets, but, as Forrest said, I'm sure they'd be great. The route works around many features, so bring a liberal sampling of longer runners, expecialy if you are linking pitches.

 

Specifics:

Read no further if you don't want them.

 

A loweball placement was very good and (I felt) very necessary for the .11d/.12a pitch. I'm sure that there is other good stuff that is ok enough to place if you are aiding, but it was all I could see to place while freeing it. Even so, you had to look ahead, pull hard moves, place it somewhat blindly from a layback and then move on, checking it as you climbed past it. Otherwise, I bet you would be trying the crux with the pro a good deal down. Probably safe enough a fall without that piece, nonentheless, a long ride.

 

Regarding pitch 5 - I'd be very curious to hear what Forrest used, I had a decent alien far below me and placed a couple of crappy loweballs. I tried to place micro nuts, but they kept yanking out. I couldn't see the placements b/c I was placing from a balancy lieback. As I recall, I climed that particular section like I couldn't fall, because I had the impression I would wind up significantly below the belay. (whimper!) Some of the worst over gripping of my life . . ..

 

Did I mention practicing hard placements from a lie back?

[forrest_m]

Matt Anderson wrote “I own no offsets”

 

That’s kind of funny, ‘cause I don’t own any Lowe balls…

We actually had a double set of small aliens and offsets, which was probably overkill. One full set including the offsets sure was nice, however, with maybe doubles in the 0 and 1 sizes. We got good use out of both straight sided and offset brass nuts.

 

Probably safe enough a fall without that piece, nonentheless, a long ride.

 

I would agree that there is always some bomber gear on each pitch, but it’s liberally spaced, i.e. you would take a long fall, but the route is pretty steep and clean and you wouldn’t deck…

 

Regarding pitch 5 - I'd be very curious to hear what Forrest used, I had a decent alien far below me and placed a couple of crappy loweballs. I tried to place micro nuts, but they kept yanking out. I couldn't see the placements b/c I was placing from a balancy lieback.

 

I got a couple of good pieces in just as you turn the roof (just off the belay). Then the crack gets very small and shallow. I got a decent 0 alien and a blue-black offset, but both required a lot of fiddling to get them into the sweet spot. Same with the nuts – there are decent places, but it’s a matter of millimeters to find the sweet spot. I’m blown away that you did that free, I started out trying but quickly realized it was out of my league. P 6 & 7 had a lot more stemming and seemed like you could hang out and place better gear.

 

Matt, I have a question for you: on the 12a pitch, how did you work the beginning? Did you move the belay from the bolts below the slab down to the tree? If I was freeing it, I think I would want to load up the crack down by the tree (where it’s really good) with solid gear, but with a belay from the fixed station, that would be a rope drag nightmare. (Aiding I was able to swallow the runout and not place anything until I got high enough to not have too much drag).

[Matt_Anderson]

quote:

---

Matt, I have a question for you: on the 12a pitch, how did you work the beginning? Did you move the belay from the bolts below the slab down to the tree? If I was freeing it, I think I would want to load up the crack down by the tree (where it’s really good) with solid gear, but with a belay from the fixed station, that would be a rope drag nightmare. (Aiding I was able to swallow the runout and not place anything until I got high enough to not have too much drag).

---

We used the fixed, belay, so I swallowed my nuts and waited to place. The climbing was about 5.10 there. I think I remember a hard move that I placed something, climbed up, then reached down to clean the piece. I was nervous, but pretty freakin' desensitized after pitch 5. . . Once I got high enough that placing wasn't to much of an issue, the placements were good enough to make me happy . . .

 

Isn't the rock grand at the crux of pitch 7? That pitch is probably my favorite one in the north cascades.

 

quote:

---

I got a couple of good pieces in just as you turn the roof (just off the belay). Then the crack gets very small and shallow. I got a decent 0 alien and a blue-black offset, but both required a lot of fiddling to get them into the sweet spot. Same with the nuts – there are decent places, but it’s a matter of millimeters to find the sweet spot.

---

I remember the good pieces at the roof and I think I fiddled in a blue or black, probably in the same place that you got the blue-black. From then on I remember a whole lot of crap - nothing like yanking a nut out of its placement when testing it to make a crappy lie back seem worse. The boys who freed it showed a great deal of respect for future experiences of the aid climbers among us. I was scared shitless . . .

 

I remember fixating on a sloping ledge and reasoning that one would probably miss it as long as they pushed out just a little bit. Do you remember it? Or was I just letting my imagination get the best of me?

[layton]

Forrest,

 

Did you see or hear if the party (another Mike)to your left on Liberty Crack got up ok? I thought about you guys as I hiked out and your party and the lib crack party weren't very high and the weather loooked worsening.

 

Nice Job!

[forrest_m]

Michael, I'm pretty sure they made it up. (Was one of them a recently-transplanted californian now working as a guide in bellingham? We chatted for a minute but I didn't get his name). We were just summitting when I saw their headlamps arriving at their truck, around 11:30.

[forrest_m]

Thanks for the beta Matt. We did the route on Saturday, and we did indeed do a lot of aid. It was a pretty full day, even without my bonehead move (see below). In the end, we couldn’t quite decide whether to approach this as a free-with-a-little-aid climb or as a full-on aid route. We didn’t want to commit to something that would be too hard/poorly protected to french free, but also wanted to carry as little gear as possible. So of course, we weren’t really ideally equipped for either. Basic summary: my feeling is that you would have to be a very solid 5.11+ climber to do much of the business part of the route free. Regardless of the difficulty of the climbing (the rock is excellent and pretty featured), the gear is often long stretches of small brass nuts, sometimes very tricky to place. Offset aliens were nice. The route doesn’t see a lot of traffic and some crack gardening was required to get the gear in. Bottom line, we basically aided pitches 5-8. All the aid was clean and pretty reasonable; beware the fixed pins, as we were able to finger-clean two of the ones we found. One nice thing is that you can pretty easily bail off the route: all the belays to the top of pitch 7 are fixed, with at least 1 new 3/8 inch bolt per anchor. The topo in Beckey is pretty accurate, though some of the fixed pins have been replaced with bolts.

 

After wanking with gear at my house, we drove up to the pass Friday night. Saturday morning came too soon; unseasonably cold temperatures (36 degrees when we woke up) made it hard to get a super-early start, but we were climbing by 7:30. The first four pitches are pretty straightforward. Pitch 3 & 4 could be run together with a single rope, and they use different size gear. At the top of P3 in the Beckey topo, it shows a dogleg to the right; someone has added a second bolt that allows you to continue free straight up and left to the base of the P4 chimney, but this is a pretty hard move (mid 11).

 

The fifth pitch starts out from under a big roof up a ramp to the left. Good pro and handholds die out as you pull into a small corner, then I aided up the thin seam (climbing seemed like it might go but it would be very hard to place gear while free climbing here), past a fixed bashie thing. The crack peters out and there is about 10 feet of mandatory free climbing that made me pretty glad I was wearing rock shoes and not wall boots. Horizontal pulls get you to a pretty good stance (10+), where you can get some more gear in and in a few more moves you reach a nice new bolt. Another couple of hard moves above the bolt get you into another crack system, which gets easier as you pull into the corner above. (11a free from bolt to anchors) This is the last comfy belay for a while, at least there is a small pedestal where you can stand instead of hanging from the anchors. The topo says 140 ft, but really only about 90.

 

P6 heads right around another small roof with some fixed gear. The topo said A3, but we found it to be easier than the aid on the 5th and 7th pitch. By now, we were fully in aid mode and had abandoned any ideas about doing much free climbing. Once you get into the aiding mindset, it’s pretty hard to break out of, and we didn’t feel too good about taking falls on the consistently small gear/flexing old fixed knifeblades. The Cascade Ceilings at the top of the pitch have lots of good cracks and features, but rope drag prevented Hal from doing many continuous free moves here either. From the hanging belay on the slab, p7 starts out with a very awkward rightward traverse down to a tree then up the crack. This would be a scary free lead without preplacing gear. The belay is another hanger, below another large roof. Pitch 8 was pretty easy aid, with a lot of fixed gear, before the angle eased off and we could free up through blocky terrain to a gravelly terrace.

 

We moved up quickly to M&M ledge, a short 5.7 traverse up and left, then I ran the next two pitches together. Really fun climbing up a very clean ramp and dihedral – it would almost be worth doing the barber pole route just for this upper section. Hal followed with the pack and then headed up the next blocky section. At this point, I did one of the dumbest things I’ve done in the mountains, a mistake that turned an ordinary long day into a mini-epic. Dusk was falling fast as Hal led, and the overcast sky and occasional spits of rain made me really want to hurry, so put my headlamp onto my helmet as I belayed. Just as I put my helmet on, but before I had a chance to fasten the strap, Hal started pulling slack out hard, so I let go of my hat to pull rope through, then – DUH – looked up to see if he needed more. There was the sound of plastic impacting rock, and I looked over my shoulder just in time to see my helmet take one hard bounce off the block I was sitting on and then out into the abyss. Loosing my helmet was bad enough, although from here to the top was mostly ridge travel, but loosing the headlamp was a major bad. The sky was overcast and there was no moon. By the time I got to the next belay, it was fully dark. We loaded the jumars on the rope before I left the belay, then I ran up the next pitches at full speed, trying to get past the slab portion before the rain kicked in. Hal jugged in the dark, only becoming aware of gear to clean when the upper jumar was blocked by the carabiner. The last 300 feet of easy ground took a long, long time: I climbed 30 feet with the headlamp, clipped into something, then belayed Hal up with the pack, directing the beam of the lamp at his feet.

 

Fortunately, we both had the descent pretty wired, although coming down the scree gully was a pain. It was the same drill, I would go 20 feet, then turn to light up the path for Hal to follow. We finally got down to the trail, and were very grateful that it is such a highway. We dragged our tired asses back to the car at 3:30, about 23 hours after we had gotten up.