All throughout the approach and climb, Eric, my normally taciturn climbing partner, kept mentioning that we could be on Serpentine Arete now instead of thrashing through brush, stumbling up a sandy gully, or smearing our shoes on a half-inch-thick layer of lichen. What a route snob.

It's true that the route we climbed was not as long or exposed or easily accessed as one of the classic routes on Dragontail. There was some loose rock, and dirt, and a carpet of lichen that you could wiggle your toes in luxuriantly. Still, we got in four fun pitches on the northwest buttress of Colchuck Balanced Rock. With some trundling, we reached the notch separating the buttress from the west face and stared up at the huge fresh scar above us. Not too long ago, a chunk of the upper portion of our route had fallen off and now a sprinkling of teetering debris and half-fallen flakes lay between us and the summit.

Much earlier that day, I woke after two hours of sleep and sloshed my mug full of coffee. My brother Chris, visiting for a few weeks, grabbed his wee daypack and a pillow to join me at the car, where he prompty resumed sleeping. I drove on to pick up Eric and thence to Leavenworth, lukewarm coffee corroding my gut ever so mildly and barely keeping me on the road. Eric set a quick pace up the trail and we reached Colchuck Lake in a stomach-churning hour and a half. We took a snack break, so I added warm, oily hummus and beef stick to the gurgling mixture in my belly.

Chris split off from the group to wander up to Aasgard Pass while Eric and I glided effortlessly through the slide alder toward Colchuck Balanced Rock. My three liters of water were at least halved by now, but thankfully the sun was back behind the mountain. We scrambled up the sandy gully to a notch and looked across at the west face of CBR. Right away, we noticed the big scar, as well as the striking and clean line of the West Face route, marked by colorful lichen streaks and the jutting roof halfway up. Our objective, the northwest buttress, separated from the face by a slanting fault, looked nondescript.

We scrambled over sparkling fresh granite shards and rock dust to the base of the buttress and looked for a route. Beckey doesn't describe the NW Buttress route in great detail, but we picked out a line that looked reasonable and would take us toward the crest of the buttress. Eric led the first pitch and we swung leads, four pitches to the notch. The climbing was varied, dirty, and fun:

• Pitch 1: Start left of a diamond-shaped roof, black with a large white stripe. Easy blocky climbing goes right to meet a dihedral. Follow the corner up and then left to a nice belay ledge on the crest. A full 200', 5.8+.
• Pitch 2: Start on the left side and climb up toward a pair of corners. Skip the first one, with a dirty crack in the back, and continue toward the obvious handcrack splitting the left wall of the next corner. Grab bushels of black lichen up the handcrack and then step right through a tree. A few chimney moves and then pull up and right onto a prime belay spot below a slab. Can belay from here, but probably better to drag the rope around to the right through trees and belay at the base of the chimney. 110', 5.8.
• Pitch 3: Move right past the aforementioned trees and then up the right-slanting chimney. Pull over the lip and onto the slab, then wander up to a flat spot next to a slab and RFC. 100'?, 5.8. Alternately, make a hard move into the crack directly above the belay and head straight up the slab.
• Pitch 4: Move left across a bush and into the low-angle right-facing corner. Follow the corner (dirty, bushes) and then turn left onto increasingly shitty rock toward the notch. Enjoy the rope drag and note the incredible soaring hand crack on the west face, now threatened by huge killer flakes. 200' + scrambling to the notch, 5.7d.

So now we're at the notch and it looks nasty. I start up with the rack, but I'm not feeling it. There's a lot of loose crap for me to knock down onto Eric, it's mid-afternoon, Chris will be waiting for us in a few hours, and it looks like the route fell off and we'd have to find a new one. There are certainly some possibilities, but that'll have to wait for another day.

I climb back down and traverse off toward an inviting grassy gully. Once in the gully, we stash the rope and scramble up and then back right to the summit area. Eric says that, at this point, he's just happy to tag a summit. I'm in full agreement. We skip the boulder problem guarding the true summit (the Balanced Rock itself) and Eric starts down while I finish a snack.

The descent to the south, on ball-bearing scree, is fast, so I assume Eric is already way ahead of me and surf my way down with a quickness. There's no sign of my partner after a few minutes, though, so I wait for a bit and he appears far up above me. More trundling and sliding and we're down in the basin below the west face. I'm totally parched and suck down all of my water. There are plenty of cragging possibilities to gape at on the way down, with several minor towers rising in close proximity to the main peak.

Chris is waiting down at the lake. I soak my throbbing feet in the cool water and polish off the hummus. Eric takes off down the trail while Chris and I laze around a bit more, but we catch up to him below the lake. The hike out is endless. The next day, we introduce Chris to the hand jam with a fine day of cragging at Pearly Gates.