[TR] Liberty Bell- Freedom Rider 9/9/2006

[layton]

Climb: Liberty Bell-Freedom Rider

 

Date of Climb: 9/9/2006

 

Trip Report:

Marcus and I recently climbed Freedom Rider on the east face of Liberty Bell. Since there are no TR's on this route, I'll post some useful beta and pics.

 

The Beckey Guide topo and description pretty much says it all. The 3rd pitch has either a 10d traverse, or a hard 5.11 o/w, we took the offwidth. It's very hard, I didn't even come close to freeing it on lead, nor did I try very hard after a pebble become lodged between my shoe and bunion.

 

The route is quite sustained the whole way, even the 5.8 pitches. The 5.8 roof on pitch 8 could be the crux besides the O/W. Did a hold break off?

 

The Medusa Roof was uneventful, however, both Marcus and I were getting severe biceps and brachioradialis cramps from the O/W and sustained climbing. 5.8=5.10 for us around that point.

 

We never saw the Cedar Creek Fire plume, maybe it's under control as the fire crew seemed to be on coffee break in Mazama (not that we were helping any either).

 

So it's a good route, go do it. If you can lead 10's and pull on #5 camalots, you'll get up it. It took us around 9 hours up from the base...most of which were on the o/w.

 

Gear Notes:

Gear: 4",4.5", 5" cams (yikes!). The 4" comes in handy elsewhere on the route.

Plenty of tiny tiny cams to 2" cams, and one 3" cam. Nuts, tri-cams, rp's.

Mega rack basically.

1 60m rope.

12-14 slings and draws.

Crampons not needed to get on the route, check from the lookout to see if there's snow.

 

Approach Notes:

Only rap with one rope, two ropes get stuck as shit. Descend the regular raps and hike back to your car via blue lake trail and Hwy 20.

 

Pictures (hopefully Marcus will post some too)

Smokey Haze

 

The Climb

 

 

 

Scenery

 

 

 

Sky and Ross a' clamberin'

 

Edited September 12, 2006 by michael_layton

[ericb]

awesome pics....looks like the air quality has improved significantly since we were in the area on Thursday (9/7). Hopefully the forecasted snow in the area Thurs/Fri will put the fires to rest for the year. I think the smoke in your #6 pic is the cedar creek fire...looks like it's blowing to the south but mellowed

Edited September 12, 2006 by ericb

[layton]

I think that's just a cloud in the 6th picture.

The rain and new high pressure system pushed the smoke away almost completely on sunday.

After the high pressure settled, the smokey haze came back. Glad i won't be there thurs/fri, but I really hope those fires go out soon!

[skykilo]

Cool pictures, Mike, but I'd really like to hear more about your emotions, bandanas, and where you learned those snazzy dance moves.

[marcus]

Ah, emotions were high that day in the Brotherhood of the Bandana, clambering to the sky...

[mattp]

Marcus-

You've linked the html pages that display the images, rather than the image files themselves. When viewing an image in the gallery, right click it to get the .jpg address for the image. Then, if you paste that between the image tags in yhour post, you'll get the photo. One problem, though: your originals are 2500 pixels wide, and will blow out the page so this thread is unreadable and we can only see a quarter of the image at a time.

 

P1 variation:

 

 

 

The meaning of offwidth:

 

 

 

Bandana brotherhood:

 

 

 

 

These are the "medium" sized versions of the image files, automatically created when you upload to the gallery.

[AJScott]

Mmmmm...That OW looks YUMMY! Keep the wapass porn coming...

[lunger]

DH and I enjoyed this route on Sunday (9/23) in perfect temps. I haven't been climbing v. hard this summer, so this climb provided some much-needed smelling salt.

 

Having now climbed both the p. 3 ow and the dihedral/traverse options, i prefer the offwidth, both for quality of climbing and security(!?). You might discount this primitive climber's opinion, but even at .11- ow, I think it is easier (and provides more pro) than the ".10d" traverse, which I did not free.

ow is straight up; traverse option up corner w/ rotten block on l.h.s., then right at near (visible) top of ow. ugh.

 

The dude (guide?) that leads the 1st pitch (DH) gets the tougher draw each round (good thing i brought the sandwiches), but there's plenty to go around. To complete my humiliation/emasculation, DH ran together the two somewhat-dirtweasel .10 pitches #s 9 and 10, leaving me with the plum, the Medusa roof pitch. Super fun climbing in a striking feature, steep for the grade (juggy .8), and cool exposure as you chimney over a lot of air.

looking down while chim-chimneying

 

DH finishing chimney, can be made out (barely) in background.

 

This route deserves more traffic. With no one around, we trundled a bit from the lower pitches. I also kicked down a fist-sized foothold during a loose and cruxy bit on p. 2, proving the wisdom of DH's sheltered p. 1 belay to the left of the corner.

 

Gear notes: we had a rack of nuts, almost double cams to .75", then single cams to 4", supplemented w/ tri-cams. This worked well. Bring big stuff per Mike's above if you choose to ow.

 

As you can see by Mike/Marcus's pics, the rock quality varies, so the smallest cams and rp's are (imo) negligibly useful. Shoulda had: syrah, as counterpoint to sandwiches.

 

Great time. From summit spied this oft-photographed group:

[Alpinfox]

Woohoo!

 

Nice pics!

 

So that crack in the first picture is the crux .11 OW? How much of it is .11 OW? It looks narrower+easier at the bottom?

 

Where the hell is DH these days anyway?

[lunger]

thanks; unfortunately, the camera angles don't capture just how cool that big narrowing chimney is.

 

yeah, it starts out mellow-thrutchy, then gets pretty darn desperate around the roof, but really only for a couple of stiff moves, then gets hard again, but not as hard. The ow then accesses a SWEET thin-hands to hands crack. this whole climb is fun, go get 'er.

 

btw, the previous day after Serpentine, we went on enviro-cleanup patrol: someone had left two chopped-up ropes on the Beckey route. They had rapped down the route from the top of p. 3 below the slab, where you could easily walk to the usual rap station. They didn't have the common courtesy to leave proper booty; the nice 1/2 ropes were both cut in this fiasco, and single-line raps were fixed. (???) we packed 'em out, rando-ropes-a-plenty.