[TR] The Mole - North Face 6/21/2014

[kpalka]

Trip: The Mole - North Face

 

Date: 6/21/2014

 

Trip Report:

North Face of the Mole, 6/21/2014

 

We have made a tradition of doing something long and ass-kicking every year on the solstice in order to take full advantage of the long day. This year with the good weather forecast on the east side we decided it was a perfect opportunity to take a run at the long approach in to the Mole and Shrew up the Hook Creek drainage in Leavenworth. We had attempted it last year and were shut down by unexpected poor snow conditions (and a lot of new snow) up towards the climbs. A later than planned start (it was a long work week...) made it so that we attempted the Mole, but not the Shrew this year.

 

Leaving the car at 8 am we started up the trail to Yellowjacket Tower. It is a straightforward, but steep and bushy trail. In comparison to the rest of the approach, it seems like a stellar trail. We read that if you traverse towards the drainage a couple 100 ft below the tower you can avoid sketchy death slabs up higher. In retrospect, somewhere in between the two would have been good. We ended up schwacking through brush so thick that we couldn't see each other even when we were 5 ft apart. After some full body thrashing through the brush, we headed almost straight up the drainage, avoiding as much blowdown as possible.

 

A lot of hiking and a lunch stop later, we were just below the base of the Mole. It was about 2:30 pm. We ditched packs and headed up the sandy gully to the N side of the Mole. A couple hundred ft of scrambling took us to the obvious start of the climb just down and left of a bushy ledge. We brought doubles to 3, a 70m rope, boots and ice axes.

 

The climb was heavily vegetated. Kev took the first pitch and found himself regularly pulling on dirt and excavating cracks. He stopped with about 5 feet of rope remaining and built a 2 piece anchor. We found for both pitches bigger gear was handy. He had one bomber 3 cam in the anchor, and a 1 or 2 would have worked really well too.

 

The second pitch started with a hand traverse to the left before heading up and trending right as per the route description. At one point I found myself traversing on a very spongy (but stable?) ledge. I climbed the path of least resistance to the top, staying towards the right arete. My favorite part of the climb was popping over the shoulder to a stunning view of the Enchantments. The awesome view stayed visible through the finish as I stayed on and just to the left of the arete. I built an anchor at the top with about 15 ft of rope remaining. The route was very doable in those 2 long pitches.

 

We took some time to enjoy the summit and soak in some afternoon sun. We began our rap down the E face around 4:30 pm. The raps are off one good bolt combined with various other fixed gear, slung rock, old pins... The first rap is to a big obvious ledge (you could do it on a 60). The second would have taken us just to the notch on our 70, but we chose to do 2 shorter raps to get us further down the snow filled gully (if you want to do the 2 shorter raps keep your eye out for the 3rd, we went right past it at first).

 

We were very happy to have our ice axes as we descended the steep summer snow to another rap on a slung flake to the left as you descend the gully. We did a full rap to get further down the gully and then traversed down and left before scrambling up to a ledge. There, we found 2 more fixed raps off slung bushes and trees. Those took us down to the snowfield at the base of the peak that we descended to our packs. The descent seemed pretty straightforward, but we were definitely happy to have gear for snow.

 

We started hiking down at around 7/730 pm. Unfortunately, we ended up bushwacking towards the base of Yellowjacket in the dark due to our later start. This added some time and blind guessing to our trek. After the steep stumbly hike out we got back to enjoy food and beer with some good friends. It was 11:30 pm, and we were a bit battered and scraped up (Kevin, yes, shorts were a bad choice), but happy.

 

We felt accomplished at the end of the day. It was a beautiful area on a gorgeous day, and definitely a good workout. The hike is more challenging than the climbing. The virtue of the climb itself is in it's position, not the character of the climbing, or the route itself. Needless to say, it's not on our list to repeat. We wouldn't recommend it to a 5.7 leader as the dirty, alpine nature of the climb makes it feel a couple grades harder.

 

**Will post photos later, file size toooooo big

 

 

Gear Notes:

We used a rack double to #3 camalot, 70m rope, ice axes and boots.

 

Approach Notes:

Long, lots of bushwacking.