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???