Short Cashmere Crags Traverse

[Cpt.Caveman]

Sunday My friend Jim and I hiked into Lake Viviane. Then we set up camp and went for a short walk. The next morning we woke up early and simul climbed the West Ridge of Prussik Peak and continued to the Flake the Monument and finally the Boxtop.

 

The Flake is a seldom climbed spire just east of Prussik Pk. and has a tiny summit register underneath a rock in a crack. Very interesting climbing on the traverse from Prussik leads to a notch on the ridge and a 5.8 crack to the top. I bet it gets climbed a couple of times a year at best.

 

Then we continued on to the Monument. This pinnacle is a classic must do if you ask me. There is a steep awkward 60 ft crack with good quality rock on the west face that leads to a ledge that surrounds pinnacle about 25 feet below the summit. From there it was blank rock. So we threw a rope over from the north side to the east side and anchored it down with cams. Then we proceeded to prussik up to reach the slightly sloping summit. I have never done anything as cool as that before This is the only way to reach the summit of this peak which makes it pretty unique.

 

Continuing on we reached the Boxtop which was tricky routefinding as I think the Beckey topo could use improvement. Anyway we did the red lichen traverse and I continued up the chimney and east onto the south face for some committing crack climbing. We reached a spot with a tunnel through to the north. I climbed up this chimney and through the tunnel on to the north side then again back around to the south side after reaching the ridge again. From here the routefinding is the trickiest. We continued east and bypassed a conrner and chimney and climbed up on chickenheads to the summit (a little off route). The real route bypasses the chickenhead face we climbed via very exposed traversing east to low 5th class cracks leading to the summit. The Boxtop is not easy to retreat as well. There are some rappels and steep downclimbing that are tricky.

 

We decided to bypass the High Priest because it took so long to do the Boxtop. I will be back for that one

 

So we hiked back the nine miles to our car at the Snow Creek Parking lot and drove home.

[Bronco]

It was a good idea for you to skip the High Preist if you were running short on time. They can get very long winded, especially on Sundays. yuk yuk!

 

 

[Dru]

Don't discount the lung capacity of those High Priests. How do you think they got High anyways??

[Cpt.Caveman]

I will be getting real high on that High Priest next time. Hahhaha Smokeage and actually the rock could be very good.

[David Yount]

I just did Boxtop (one of the many small peaks along Temple ridge, Prusik Peak being the west-most peak) a few weeks back. After reading the 4 routes described in Beckey's... we decided to climb a 'new' line.

Our route gave us more vertical and much more direct than 3 of the other solutions, as well as keeping the standard of climbing a bit higher. This was one of my favorite alpine lines I've climbed yet.

Begin 30 feet west (left) of the South Face route (which goes up a 4th dirty chimney just right of a black rock). On very clean granite (local anomally) steep friction 5.8, no pro, until seam is reached which forms into small crack 5.6, 25 feet. Finger crack bends left to join vertical hand crack 5.5, reaching sandy ledge. Continue in crack 5.5 to next ledge. This is same very long ledge that South Face route uses a "flake pullup 5.8" to begin next pitch. We were never definate of this flake feature, so we continued adventure climbing.

Moved the belay 35 feet east (right) to a hand crack in a left facing corner 5.7, widening to fist 5.5 and finally to offwidth 5.7 then reaching the next ledge.

During the approach from campsite at Naid Lake (newer name is Temple Lake) we saw a crack nearing the top of Boxtop and from our current stance we knew this crack to be only 40 feet left. But how to get over _there_?

We were on the right side of a 30-foot wide, 8-foot deep, perfectly horizontal roof. There was a horizontal crack between the roof and the face below it, a small ledge 3 to 4 feet below the roof and another crack just a little bit above the ledge.

Due to the "kitty litter" nature of decomposing bits of rock lining both cracks, it's my thought nobody has ever climbed this feature (or at least not protected it As I inched along the 2-inch ledge on my right knee and toe, dragging my left leg dangling in space 5.9+ for big people or 5.6 for smaller, I easily cleaned several spots of kitty litter for pro, hacking and chipping with nut tool, eventually reaching the vertical crack.

Hmmm, overhanging finger crack pinches to tips, with undisturbed black lichen thickly coating both sides of the dihedral. No way _I_ can free this, so 20-feet of C1, filling my partner's eyes with thick clouds of dislodged lichen until I can pull the lip, then 5.5 fist and offwidth to last ledge.

There are some thick but not deep chickenheads (steep, scarce pro) leading up near the right side of ledge. We opted for last pitch as per South Face (didn't find the bolt for the awkward step-across).

On each ledge during the climb we found 1 to 4 rap points, but ultimately we rigged our own descent (you might have seen our purple slings with rap ring?) Actually, we removed well over a dozen slings throughout the south face. Most were completely useless so worn, one was strangling a tree, another was left lying on a ledge forgotten or dropped. Man, that was over 3lbs extra packweight I had to haul out. Beckey mentions a suitable horn for rapping the north face in 1 double, I'd recommend looking harder than we did.

The published routes seem overly fiddly, but fine if you've the patience and interest.

Many Cascade peaks are found to be piles of choss refusing to lie down and so is Boxtop, but with a difference. It's composed of now-discrete blocks (huge blocks) of granite, stacked. It's very spooky if you poke about the top 15 feet and carefully inspect the rocks........

The "tunnel route" sounds unique, next time...