Climbing Acid Baby last August with Will was awesome—the route and rock were both of very high quality. It only made sense that The Valkyrie would be similarly awesome.

Dale and I got an early start from Seattle on Saturday morning, leaving town at 6am and then leaving the car at the trailhead just shy of 9am. We arrived at the base of the route before noon and found a bunch of parties on Acid Baby while there was only one group of three on The Valkyrie and they were already well into the second pitch. Whew. Our plan to take the second shift worked out. We ate lunch and then headed up.

Hand jams of glory on pitch 2 (photo by Dale Apgar)

The first pitch crux was a little tricky but not too bad. Pitch two was much more sustained and quite fun, with a long hand crack section on very grippy rock. The rightward traverse on pitch 4 into the hidden hand crack was especially memorable. From there, more fun moves and lower-angle climbing brought us to the knobby face and then on to the shared ridge finish. We completed that by 5:45pm, having taken our time on the route to enjoy it. A weather system had threatened us around 2pm, but it ended up blowing past us to the West, so we lucked out.

The summit had great views and was an easy walk off. We descended quickly and floated on some whiskey from the lake down, arriving at the car just after 9pm for a 12-hour car-to-car time. Great route—perhaps even better than Acid Baby!