Acme, WA - Mythic Wall

Day two of our extended weekend adventure took us to the east side of the Twin Sisters just outside of Bellingham and near the town of Acme. I think that is the place where Wile Coyote orders his stuff for his attempts to trap the Road Runner - Beep Beep! The goal was to climb a little known wall called the Mythic Wall. I had read about it on Cascade Climbers but had little more information than that. It was supposed to be a nice 6 pitch gear route around 5.10 but the approach was going to be a bit exploratory. ...that means bush whacking here in the Cascades...shhhhh...don't tell Kathy...

The images that lured me in...

Beautiful Green Creek with Baker to the east

Options for the Olivine type rock

Looks so good...doesn't it?

Gear and all!!

Where it all begins...

A late departure from Index, getting caught in the Everett Fair traffic, a great Thai dinner in Monroe and waiting on Hiway 9 for a transport being towed out of a ditch got us to the trail head rather late in the evening. The energizer bunny hopped into her jammies early and bedded down since she doesn't drive stick. I'm going to have to fix that issue sometime soon. Eventually I found Mosquito Lake Road and then after crossing the Nooksack River FSR #38 which is also called the Middle Fork Nooksack River Road. I went about 10 miles to a nice pull off and we crashed there hoping for an early morning start. We were up around 6am and drove the last mile to the signed Elbow Lake trail head. KC made a brew and I got us some oats ready. A quick packing and we were on our way.

We hiked down to a washed out bridge and the first challenge was crossing the wide and fast flowing Nooksak on some thinner logs. Once on the other side we regained the trail and made our way easily to the first major switch back at ~2700 feet. At this point it was time to drop into the gentle forest and make our way up towards the head of Green Creek while paralleling the creek at around 2750'. When we met the creek at this elevation we would see the talus slopes and should be able to spot the wall. At first the forest was gentle but it didn't take long before we has to cross Hildebrand Creek and beat our way through Devil's Club and some seriously slippery rocks. This was definitely ankle wrecking territory and I didn't intend to hurt myself in anyway so I went carefully through the creek area. I also had the forethought to bring flagging tape and mark the "trail" we were using so that we could hopefully pick our way back easy enough. Unfortunately I underestimated KC's ability to suffer through bush whacking. Let's just say this was a challenge for her and she had her moments. I tried to enjoy the givings of the gentle forest and as we made our way up past the creek we ran into very thick huckleberry. Those things are tasty and I would stop every so often and pack my mouth full of them. It kind of made up for the lack of trail. Eventually we made our way down to the creek, crossed on some logs, through dense fir and out into the talus. What a relief! Unfortunately what was fore casted as 20% chance of showers had it's 20% focused on this area. We discussed options, ate a power bar and Kathy swore that she was not going back through the bush we just came in by. The clouds descended so quickly that we couldn't see the route(s) what so ever. After 3.5 hours of bush whacking we had no choice but to turn back and head for the trail head.

A Green Creek Waterfall

A brief moment of bush whacking relief

Find my happy place, find my happy place, find my happy place...

We decided to cross the creek by following the talus down and hopefully find a better path on the other side. What I didn't know is that my altimeter was going fritzy and as we made our way up the other side to the 2750' mark we would end up much higher on the slope than indicated. As we bashed our way back, things didn't look familiar and we weren't coming across my flagging tape. Kathy was growing more frustrated and said something about the worst experience of her life. I had a hard time believing her because it wasn't raining or snowing...yet. The elevation mistake left us way too high up slope and traversing more difficult slopes than we initially came in on. Kathy was predicting we would never find the Elbow Lake trail and that we would bash our way to the van. I was a little more optimistic and kept consulting the topo map I had bought a couple of nights before. We of course eventually found the trail and that is when I discovered the altimeter was way off. As I stood on the trail and called down to KC she asked if I was on the trail. I gave her the affirmative and she told me to "shut-up"; I don't think she believed me until she was standing beside me. A hug, a smile, tears of joy? and we were on our way to warm drinks, dry clothes and to see Westieeeeeee.

Maybe next time!

Index, WA - Godzilla Attack

Kathy's plan for the weekend included a Thursday afternoon stop at Index so she could jump on Godzilla. I find it amazing that she has the courage to tackle this route after just starting her leading on gear earlier this year. She is a real go getter, rip roaring, action packed, unstoppable, coffee buzzing zippy package of non-stop energy!

Kathy in deep meditation before her attempt with a lizard

Starting up the monster

Tackling the sticky bits

Layback that flake girl

Chucking in the cams

Running it up to the good stuff

I didn't remember being on this route from my past ascents but it is an amazing climb and of very high quality. I will come back with MC for a run on the three pitches before the year closes out.

Nice lead KC!

North Bend, WA - Infinite Bliss...3rd Time's A Charm

Not again! Yes, again...and this time SUCCESS!

Infinite Bliss is just something that I need to get done and heck it is so close to home that it is almost effortless to make the approach. For my third attempt to climb this long route in my back yard, I hooked up with Craig Chappel. I was feeling like I owed him a good time since taking him gardening on Galaxy a few weeks earlier. In addition, I was determined to go and place a couple of rap stations on this route to improve conditions related to safety since my last experience was less than desirable. Matt P from the WCC and Radd from CC each contributed bolts and a hand drill and I bought chain and hangers to plug a few of the missing holes.

With the weather looking like it would be overcast but no rain predicted I thought this would make for a good day since it is a south facing route. I confirmed the details with Craig the evening before and gave him directions to the I-90 meeting spot and suggested a 6am rendezvous. The next morning I was waiting for Craig at the Albertson's parking lot but unfortunately with Craig's newness to the area he got confused and went to the exit on I-5. Once we sorted that out we ended up about 1 hour behind schedule but nonetheless we were off.

During the drive in we saw a cougar on the road. A real live wild cougar! That was my first WA cougar sighting and it was exciting. As we rounded a corner we could see something down the road that looked like a very very large dog or maybe it is an El Paca with a weird tail...no, no that's a...wow a cougar! This one had a long tail and seemed to be more rust or dark reddish color but it was hard to tell for sure since we were up the road and it was dawn and the light was filtered through the trees. Cool either way!

With a quick approach we were at the base and simul-climbing in no time. This time I paid careful attention to all the topo details and worked hard to find all the belay stations and fixed gear. I also discovered that the topo description is flawed and made the necessary corrections. We made good time to pitch 14 but then with a flawed topo Craig missed the upper bolts of this pitch and needed to run it out. The next two pitches were easy but again I took time to find the fixed gear and figure out how to head across the slabs but still provide Craig a belay. At one point I climbed ~330' straight up with no gear and had Craig tie the two ropes together to get us to the belay of pitch 17. Once again I "onsighted" ;) pitch 19; this is the money pitch! The last three pitches were all new to me and Craig was game to finish so off we went. Sometime during the lead on pitch 21 clouds began moving in and we were caught in a white out. This slowed our ascent and also dropped the temperature enough so that I needed to layer up. Unfortunately Craig was in shorts and didn't have extra gear to layer up with so he began to find himself a bit chilled. We topped out around 6:30pm, ~10 hours of climbing, but now had many raps ahead of us to get down. During our second rap the ropes got stuck and we spent a fair amount of time dealing with that issue. We ended up rappelling to around pitch 18 before we really lost light and had to switch on our head lamps. Knowing that the raps stations are all bolted was comforting but the challenge would be finding them in the dark. I worked with the pitch lengths from the topo and estimated how far down the rope I was rappelling until I found each and every station. Needless to say the going was slow and all in all we ended up down at about 2:30am in the morning. Overall I viewed this as good practice for something but what a long 18 hour day.

Due to the late night rappels I never got to pound in a new belay station but intend to go fix that issue eventually.

Here are my pros and cons regarding the day...

Things that didn't work so well:


- not providing Craig with clear directions for meeting point. I didn't consider his newness to the area and this set back amounted to more than 1 hour at the end of the day. I should have emailed him a map and made sure he was clear on the place to meet

- for a long demanding route like this consider my partner's state of physical fitness. At the same time my partner needs to understand what he/she is signing up for and they need to make that same assessment. In this case, the route is frigg'in long and we could have rappelled at anytime so it was less of an issue



- provide a complete description and location information to those you have put on notification as your emergency back-up team. Although I gave Michael and Scott an itinerary and information where we were going, I neglected to provide a map to the area

- Stuck rope. We should have tested the "ease of pull" after the first time I went up to fix it. I made the mistake of determining that the rope knot was catching on the rock which wasn't the case. Bad root cause analysis :( and this cost us time. I don't usually test ropes when the 1st man is down unless the pull angle is tricky

- Prepare for changes in mountain weather especially when there is a change in weather fore casted for the region. Although the forecast was over cast with sunny breaks for the day, the system moving in for the following days was forecast to bring rain. This meant unstable weather and as the systems gain strength the weather can change quickly.


- The topo was somewhat incorrect for lengths and bolts were hard to see


Things that went well:


- I knew the route from prior runs and except for the top pitches this aided us in getting belays found in the dark and in general orchestrating our overall descent.



- We were able to protect the 2nd on the long traverse and the 325 ft, run out. I was ok to solo that section since I had been on that terrain before in some sort of fashion.



- We had water, food and I had a wind extra jacket.



- Both of us had headlamps.



- We worked together to rap and find anchors and kept the communication up even thou we were getting tired.



- Belays were all bolted!



- Topo lengths helped to locate anchors

Cedar Creek, WA - Cedar Creek Wall

I was wanting a few days of back country camping coupled with some climbing so I looked up a few options for remote climbing areas that offered longer routes and came across the Cedar Creek Wall. Never having heard of anyone else climbing in the area I thought it would prove interesting and adventurous to go see what the wall offered with two 13 pitch routes being described in Burdo's book. I hooked up with Kevin for round two and this time a 3 day excursion involving a longer approach, camping and climbing.

Area Map for the Sawtooth Wilderness and Cedar Creek Wall

After a bit of discussion we opted to approach via Twisp and the Twisp River Road which brought us to the North Creek trail head ~3680'. From the trail head we took TR413 for ~3.25 miles (~1.5 hours) to the intersection with Cedar Creek Trail #476, ~5200'. From here the trail climbed up to Abernathy Pass (~6400') in a short 0.5 mile which took 45 minutes at a good clip. Then we continued another mile or so down the other side until we reached Cedar Creek ~4900' and good camping in another 45 minutes. Although this approach was reasonable I would recommend just parking at Cedar Falls Trail Head off of SR20 and hiking from there. It saves the drive to Twisp and up the Twisp River Road (~60 miles), the jump over the pass and is a more moderate 2000' gain over 7.5 miles or so to the camp area.

Kevin approaching the top of the pass - Mt. Gardner in the background

Cedar Creek Campsite

The next morning we departed camp around 7:00am and followed a faint trail that paralleled Cedar Creek on its' north side. This brought us below the wall in about 15 minutes and then a direct path up to the base (~5300') was taken thru the woods and across some boulders which took another 15 minutes. I was surprised at how cool the temperatures were, about 39F at night after seeing highs of 91F in the day time. The wall itself is in the sun in the morning but gets shade for most of the remainder of the day due to its' NE exposure.

Sunrise on Cedar Creek Wall

Looking up from the base at the route we climbed

The line we took was thru the weakness on the left and eventually trended over to the larger crack/chimney system on the right via a large treed ledge and some traversing. What we found in the crack/chimney system was very little gear and some loose and rotting sections of rock - typical kitty litter granite decomposition. Most pitches had marginal gear and long runouts. After successive pitches of runouts and sketchy placements we decided that we would better be safe and descend early. I'm not sure Kevin nor I wanted to deal with a rescue situation given the remote position of the wall and the fact that we had only one 60m rope and little knowledge about the wall in general. So after pitch 6 we came down using trees, bushes and flakes to pick our way 100' at a time off the face. We only had to leave 1 sling and a biner for the whole descent so we were happy about that.

Crossing the snow patch to the start of the climb

Kevin following the thinly protected 2nd pitch

Starting up the crack chimney system

Moi on pitch 6 with no gear to the next belay!!

Feeling a bit like we turn and ran with our tails between our legs and kind of bummed at the poor quality of rock we meandered our way back to camp. The thoughts of freeze dried food wasn't that appetizing after our day on the wall but to our surprise we discovered that we had neighbours. From the looks of their camp they were either some burly dudes or they got packed in by horses. These guys had huge tents, cabinets, booze, coolers, lanterns, tables, chairs, you name it! So we went over and introduced ourselves asking them if they had brought extra steak for us - jokingly! They ended up being very friendly fishermen and had many questions for us about the climbing. Before long we ended up with cold drinks and were eating steak, salad and rice for dinner.

C'est la vie!

Gentlemen...the bar is serving

Is that Top Sirloin or a mirage???