Alpine Rock Wednesday?

[Retrosaurus]

I wanted to climb Backbone tomorrow but my partner is missing. Any one up for it? Or something else?

[Retrosaurus]

Partner found. Here is the TR:

 

Dennis Harmon and I did make it up Backbone Ridge. The weather was perfect.

 

One other party on the mountain, Brian, from Leavenworth Mountain Sports and his partner passed us on our way up the moraine. One other party on the mountain and of course they are on our chosen route. No problem with that though. They only "shelled" us once on the beginning of the 3rd class at the start. They climbed much faster than us old dinosaurs. Harmon climbs slowly

and I just didn't know where the f* I was going. We were one pitch behind them on the O/W crux and watched them climb that and then didn't see them

again until they were on The Fin.

 

That 6-inch crack is really a bitch, esp. with a pack. The first half protects well enough with a collections of chockstones and a few odd placements, but the 2nd half of the pitch is definitely way run out. I had saved my #4 camalot for there but it would not go in at all and I didn't even use it on the pitch. If you don't have pro for a 6 to 7-inch crack you are, how shall we say, "shit outta luck" and likely climbing into the groundfall zone near the end of the pitch. Maybe 15 feet before the end of the pitch you get an awkward to reach 2-inch cam behind a fat flake on the left wall. That said, it is really not all that bad. Just classic "desperate thrutching." Standard O/W technique.

 

The next several 5.7ish pitches went well, though we strayed left a bit. Lots of route latitude and fun moderate crack climbing on sound granite. We then simul-climbed for several pitches up onto the middle of the initial ledge system on The Fin.

 

The Fin is an amazing piece of rock and I would like to spend more time on it, but it is a little inconvenient to get to, being ~1500 feet off the deck. It was very difficult reconciling the discrepancies between Nelson's description/diagram of climbing on The Fin and the actual features that we encountered. We never climbed anything harder than 5.7 on The Fin, although the possibilities are certainly there.

 

From maybe halfway across the initial ledge system we climbed face climbing and wanna-be cracks up to the right side of a large ledge whose left side dropped off in shallow left facing corners. Then up the well-developed

left-facing corner that formed the right side of the ledge. From there an ascending leftward traverse on an obvious somewhat rubbly crack all the way to a perch on an arete at the left edge of The Fin below the huge overhanging block (where it looks like there will be a good ledge but there is not). From here a long crack traverses right (bypassing a beautifully clean O/W crack nearer the huge overhanging block) before ascending and then traversing rightward again through a notch at the top of The Fin. About two pitches along the backside of The Fin before going back out front again through a notch where you have your choice of many beautiful ascending cracks and corners or you can traverse off rightward to the 3rd class rubble

at the right side of the top of The Fin and finally through a notch on the summit ridge just left of the summit block and about 200 feet from the actual summit. We topped out at 8pm; timing it so that we could enjoy one more descent of Aasgard pass in the dark.

[Dru]

Ya, cool TR! did dennis bring his scubatanks along for some first ascents inb Colchuck Lake?

[Retrosaurus]

No. But I am pleased that he made it at all. Especially considering the shortage of "adult beverages" and surplus of smokes.

[Cpt.Caveman]

Yeah did he roll a smoke every belay and make you "wait until I am done" before you lead the entire route.

[Retrosaurus]

Well , I did lead the entire route.

[Cpt.Caveman]

Right on. Sounds like a good climb.