North Face on Concord Tower

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Kelsey following pitch 2

This was a quick, straightforward route starting from the Concord-Liberty Bell notch. We chose it as a fun afternoon jaunt after driving up to the pass from Seattle in the morning. The sun had swung around enough to warm the route up despite being north-facing and we had a great time chatting up a party ahead of us.

Pitch 1 is very short and leads to a nice ledge. Pitch 2 had some fun moves and jams leading to a few pockets and huecos through a thinner crux. From there, Pitch 3 traversed out left and up some really fun terrain to a final tricky move right at the summit block. Three short raps straight down the face got us back to the col and a view of an exceptionally regal-looking goat. Win.

East Ridge on Snowking Mountain

I was prepared for the approach to Snowking to be a bit tedious and I'm glad my expectations were set. We left the car at about 1,200 feet, just on the South side of the Cascade River. While it wasn't raining, it had rained overnight and all of the brush on the trail (which was copious) was soaking wet, which made for a pretty unpleasant bushwhack up the road to the start of the trail around 2,300 feet and a little over 2.5 miles later.

While the trail was a bit steep and loose, we were thankfully out of the brush at that point and slowly dried out while getting up to the 4,800-foot saddle East of Found Lake. A little bit of searching led to finding the trail up to Point 5791. I'd been hoping for sweeping views at this point of Eldorado and Boston Basin as well as His Majesty, Snowking, but we were socked in and only had some brief teases of mountain landscapes looming in the distance.

We continued over the various bumps along the ridge line before running into a pair of climbers near the saddle above Cyclone Lake. They said that they'd tried in vain for the day to find the trail to the start of Snowking's East ridge. Given that, after we found a worthy campsite on the shoulder of the final bump before the ridge, I set off to find a way through for the morning. After traversing to the far side with ample use of my whippet in the steep dirt, I found the trail and followed it back to our tent—no problem. I felt bad for those guys who had hiked all the way out and not summited.

Things cleared up as we made dinner and we were treated to a lovely sunset that lit up our route for the morning. At about 5am, we got up, had some breakfast, watched the sunrise light up Baker in the distance, and geared up for our jaunt up the snow. Aluminum crampons and light axes were plenty to feel secure on the easy ridge. We wove around a little bit to stay on snow, with one short bushy traverse from the northern to the southern side of the ridge, but things were quite efficient in general. After leaving camp at about 6am, we made it to the 7,433-foot summit at 8am. It was a beautiful, crisp morning with awesome views all around—a worthy summit all by itself.

The hike out was pretty long and especially steep down the climber's trail, but it all went uneventfully and we were back at the car by 3pm for a leisurely drive home.

Davis-Holland to Lovin' Arms Linkup

If you haven't read it, Blake Harrington's overview of this route in Climbing Magazine is excellent.

This classic Index linkup had been on my list for some time and, with Dale in town and an iffy forecast for the alpine, we decided it'd be a great way to spend a Sunday. I'd never been to the Upper Town Wall before and really liked the position up there with a great view of the town of Index as well as the river valley and Mount Index itself, which came in and out of the clouds during the day.

The first pitch was a bit wet and insecure, but not terrible. My partially-torn scapholunate ligament from last summer still isn't 100%, so I tried to keep the weight on my feet and not push it. Pitch 2 was probably the highlight—lots of fun movement in the corner and placement after placement of green C4s. The wrist held up, so we continued on through more fun, varied climbing around the roof and through the dihedral. What a fun series of pitches!

On top of Davis-Holland, we stepped right into the left-leaning hand crack of Lovin' Arms, which felt like some of the hardest moves one the climb to me. After a little ways, things eased up a bit and then got into a really fun, blocky chimney. We followed the chimney up on the next pitch and then down to the right on the ramp before exiting up and right on fun rails. We finished the last pitch up and right, which turned out to be pretty thin face climbing, but tons of fun. No throw-away pitches at all and a really fun way to spend the day with Dale.