[TR] Cinderella Peak (Twin Sisters Range) - East Buttrress 8/23/2013

[curtveld]

Trip: Cinderella Peak (Twin Sisters Range) - East Buttrress

 

Date: 8/23/2013

 

Trip Report:

The Twin Sister Range has two kinds of climbs: The ones that everyone does, namely the West Ridges of the Twins and more recently, the Mythical Wall. And the rest, which to most technical climbers, are appealing but largely unknown. Among the latter is the East Buttress of Cinderella, notable because of Beckey’s glowing description, pronouncing it an “area classic”. It’s been the subject of two threads on this site, both wondering if anyone knew anything about it. For a classic, it is an obscure one. The time had come to see if Cinderella lives up to the hype.

 

East Buttress of Cinderella from camp. Most of the technical climbing is on the lower part, a bit right of the skyline.

 

Along were two veteran explorers of the Sisters Range, Peter and Keith. Keith had climbed the East Buttress years ago, on an early repeat with route pioneer Ken Wilcox. He had few particular impressions of the climbing, aside from it taking a very long day. This wasn’t too discouraging because Keith’s a guy that finds many aspects of the Cascade experience – vegetation, wildlife, history and particularly geology -- more captivating than the climbing aesthetics that many of us ‘younger’ climbers focus on.

 

After fording the churning gray Middle Fork Nooksack, the approach was typical North Cascades fare – three miles of trail, a sizable up-hill grunt through the woods, followed by several more miles traversing meadows, krumholz, talus and occasional huckleberry stops. We stopped at Wiseman Lake for a quick dip then continued to our camp at the smaller tarn to the west. With the Sisters crest in front of us and Kulshan looming behind, it was hard to believe we were only 20 (yes 20!) miles from I-5.

 

Approaching the East Buttress the next morning, several goats trotted across the lower buttress. Not surprisingly, we easily accessed the lower buttress via a third-class ramp. From there, the route upward was reasonably obvious and matched the key highlights in the Beckey guide. Overall, most of the climbing was fourth-class with intermittent bits up to mid-fifth. We simuled most of the route, aside from a few steep walls that required a solid belay. As Jason noted in his recent TR nearby, simul-climbing in the Sisters Range is difficult because of the blocky climbing and rope drag over the super-grippy dunite rock. The upper ridge has a chunk of non-exposed scrambling before the final steeper 400 feet (awesome!) of the summit tower. Descent was a bit of down-climbing to lots of easy snow along the right flank of the Green Creek Glacier.

 

Approaching the toe. We scrambled from near the snow patch up and left to the skyline at the vegetated ramp.

 

Nice steep climbing on the second wall mentioned in the CAG

 

Crossing a clean slab near the middle of the buttress

 

Better than average class-4 simul-climbing

 

Heading left around the yellow tower, with the upper buttress in the background. You get a hint of the variable rock quality from shifts in color and surface texture.

 

So how was the climbing? Frankly it was a mixed bag in terms of quality, and often well below the standard that qualifies as “classic”. The steep parts generally had solid and clean rock, and there were some nice slab and tower sections mid-way. Unfortunately, there were also numerous passages through loose blocks and pockets of shattered rock that seriously detracted from the overall experience. Much of the worst rock is left of the crest but is hard to avoid altogether.

 

Still the buttress is a large (~1200’) and compelling feature that offers a big step up technically from the West Ridge routes. Despite its shortcomings, many adventurous climbers would enjoy the route and the local goats already do. Unfortunately there is too much loose rock to recommend it to intermediate climbers searching for a long 5.6 alpine rock outing. Although the 5.6 technical rating is about right, the route felt more like grade III, rather than the II in the CAG.

 

So basically it’s a five-star back-country trip to a three-star route. And one more hidden classic brought back to reality via the internet.

 

Gear Notes:

Medium rack with extra small cams. Rock shoes not critical but nice.

 

Approach Notes:

FS #38 road, cross river to Elbow Lake Trail, turn right off trail (uphill) at Elbow Lake, follow the ridge west past Wiseman Lake.

 

There is a decent foot log about 300 yards upstream of the missing bridge.

Edited August 28, 2013 by curtveld

[OlegV]

Nice!

[dougd]

Nice indeed! This one looks to be right in my wheelhouse!

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

d

[JasonG]

Thanks Curt! I've often wondered about this route and you and Darin have done a great job fleshing out what to expect. I have to admit that it has lost some of the appeal that it formerly had. But it still sounds like something worth doing once?

[curtveld]

But it still sounds like something worth doing once?

I think so, especially for an experienced climber that's ticked the classics. The size, great position and mostly fun climbing in such a unique area is a good package. It's just not up to that 'classic' tag which leads to unrealistic expectations

 

The loose rock is an occasional irritation, but not that bad for veteran choss-dogs. My partners, who do more 3rd class travel than me, were pretty unphased. The route I kept comparing it to--the East Ridge of Ingalls -- is much cleaner but also shorter and less remote.

 

Would be curious to get Darin's take, with his deep experience in the Sisters Range.

[JasonG]

Here is a quote regarding the east ridge of Cinderella from Darin's recent TR: "I found the climbing to be not entirely classic with lots of blocky scrambling separated by a few steep, exposed and looser-than-I-liked 5th class faces. Enjoyable at times but I wouldn’t repeat it."

 

Sounds like you guys both had a pretty similar take on it.

[dberdinka]

Having had just climbed some truly great routes on Little Sister and Skookum I was disappointed. That said the bad 4th class scrambling is still much better than most 4th class terrain in the cascades and it definitely is big, surprisingly big I thought. Moving fast I still think it took me almost 2 hours to climb. Agree with the Grade III. So probably a good route to do if you like the Twin Sisters.

 

What I find interesting is how the structure of the dunite that the Twins are composed of dictates where good alpine rock is found. Along the Crest of the range from Skookum to Cinderella there is a strong planar structure oriented north to south (tilted up to the south). Such that great climbing is found on NW to NE exposures formed by the slab surface. South faces are choss as you quickly cut down across these stacked slabs. W and E facing exposures (like the ridge line in question). Are blocky and slightly loose as you cut into them. Why this sort of bedding plane type structure even exists is beyond me as the rock us plutonic. Maybe it has something to do with when the rock was thrust upward through the crust?

 

Interesting this structure seems totally missing on the S Twin and definitely less prevalent on the N Twin. where the rock is generally a bit worse. Maybe a geology grad student do a project mapping and explaining what's going on here.

Edited August 28, 2013 by dberdinka

[curtveld]

Your observations about rock quality and aspect fit what we encountered - the nice rock tilts right (northward). The structure might result from differences in the rates of cooling, as leads to exfoliation patterns in granodiorites?

Edited August 28, 2013 by curtveld

[G-spotter]

Darin, you see the same angling layers in the gabbro on the Old Settler. Not sure what it is exactly. At that depth the magma may crystallize in layers, like laccoliths or lopoliths.

[Pete_H]

Your mom's a lopolith.

[curtveld]

Good one Pete . A bit more scenery:

 

Wiseman Lake

 

The smaller lake where we camped. East buttress on left skyline

 

Peter's nice telephoto of Baker

 

Crazy sunset with contrail

 

Da crew: Peter, Keith, Curt