Work's been putting the hurt on my climbing ambitions lately. I weaseled out of going to Lillooet to climb ice with Eric, Nick, and Gary last weekend after hearing the roads were closed (they opened later that evening). Intead I stayed home to work, but got surprisingly little done. This week, I nearly went to climb Triple Couloirs with Dave O., but he found a partner with more free time. Eric's midterms kept him out of the running for Triple C's, too. The mythical winter weather window was rolling in, so we were disappointed, but we resolved to comfort ourselves with some ice climbing on Sunday.

I shoulda put something stronger in my travel mug, because I was slit-eyed and sleepy from Monroe to Lake Wenatchee. It was a beautiful sunny day on the east side, though, and I roused my senses to gape at Drury Falls high above the river. We rolled into the Bridge Creek trailhead to an astonishing number of parked cars. Somehow, though, we were the first ones to the base of Hubba Hubba Falls, which looked fat from the road. As soon as we started up the packed trail, however, the sun hit the ice.

There was a noticeable glide crack all the way across the falls already and ice pellets rained down as we racked up. I volunteered to lead the first pitch and sniffed out what looked like the easiest line, up a shallow corner on the far right. The ice was thinner over there, as it turns out, so about 25 feet up I got to place a pin and do a mantel on the bare rock to get back over to the ice. I set the belay at a nice rock stance 100 feet up: two cams to my right, a screw and a slung ice tool to the left. My first ice lead! Woohoo!

Eric paused at the base to pick up the pin I dropped (duh...) and followed the pitch quickly. He led up a nice patch of thick, brittle ice to a mellower slope, then disappeared from view. Meanwhile, dull thuds from below announced the ascent of the next party and another pair could be seen approaching the route. The leader coming up below me hung out for a while as Eric stretched our 60m ropes to reach a tree belay on the left side of the climb. Our second pitch had a little bit of everything: thick plastic ice, wet styrofoam snow, powder-covered rock, and tool placements in moss. I cringed when my picks hit rock underneath the thin sections. We untied and slogged up what would be an avalanche deathtrap in worse conditions, then off right and back downhill to our packs. After a snack and a disparaging eye cast toward the very thin routes nearby, we headed down to the car.

On the way back, we ran into a couple guys who'd had a look at Hubba Hubba in the morning and decided against it. Suckers! Instead, they had found a short "pencil" near Alphabet Rock and took a few laps on it. We thought we'd give Classic Crack a go and burn off a bit more daylight, but the pillar sounded fun. There was no mistaking the pillar when we saw it, but it was still disappointing: a 15-foot icicle only a Washington ice climber could love. Nevertheless, we followed footprints up to a convenient set of cracks where we placed gear for a top-rope anchor. Eric went first and made it up without swinging, hooking all of the existing pick holes. Inspired by his hero Will Gadd, he then scraped up the mossy cave under the icicle, linking about five drytooling moves after numerous falls.

Not to be outdone, I added a sit-start variation (rated WTF 4?) to the pillar and took my turn on the drytool problem. Little chunks of granite fell into my mouth as my tools scratched off the rock and my ass hit the ground. Good times. There was some daylight left, but we had to be back on the road in order to catch the peak of Sunday evening traffic in Gold Bar.