Ralph and I left late Thurs night after all the festivities for Washington Pass. We rolled into an empty parking lot and got a few quick hours of shut-eye before starting off in the morning. Snow was hard and firm, but we were too lazy to go back to the car for crampons. Quickly losing the windy, snow-covered Blue Lake Trail, we just headed straight east towards Liberty Bell. We scrambled up a narrow gully onto some low-angle exposed slabs that had a few splotches of verglas, rating the terrain as Beckey Class 2. We topped out on the knob and realized that we were overlooking the desired gully to the Beckey route. Facing the option of rapping down to the gully and climbing up to the notch or trying to wing it on the rock and merge into the Beckey route, we chose the latter. :) The first pitch went pretty smoothly, but then we dead-ended at a windy crack that looked way too hard. Later we found out that it was the Serpentine Crack (5.11). So we down-climbed the first pitch and were going to rap down when we met Billy. We had never been up close to mountain goats before, so we were quite excited and whipped out our cameras. Soon Billy had a friend. Soon they were about fifteen feet away, and Ralph asked me to hand him his axe. After much yelling and waving and banging the axe against rocks, the goats retreated, and we were able to approach the rappel slings. The rap down to the gully went smoothly, though the goats descended the cliff faster than we could.

We got up to the notch and finally started the classic Beckey route. Ralph squirmed himself and his pack up the chimney and around the chockstones, leading the second pitch in style. At the start of the third pitch, I wasn't happy with a cam placement so I tried to set it better and was glad when Ralph reminded me that I had not clipped it into the rope. Pretty soon I was at the finger traverse. Well, it wasn't so much of a traverse... it was more like, grab the good hold with the right hand, smear the feet [fun with boots :)], stretch all the way for the other good hold with the left hand. After gaining the ledge, there was then a beautiful slab and crack for liebacking. The crux of the pitch though was heading to the belay tree at the end of the pitch -- the rope drag was horrendous, despite all the double slings I placed. But in the future, I'm not sure if I'd take Dave Yount's advice and not clip in to the piton. Maybe if I had rock shoes with me. Ralph cruised through the last pitch with its friction slab as the final sucker punch. Great views on the summit, especially of Glacier, Dome, and the Wine Spires. After the celebratory shot of liquor, we downclimbed to the rappel ledge, which boasted three shiny new slings of red, white, and blue. Go USA!

Soon we were back at the notch, and Ralph began plunge-stepping his way down the steep gully. He stepped on a patch of goat shit, wiped out, but quickly self-arrested. I somehow managed to leave my axe at the car, and not wanting to self-arrest sans axe, slowly downclimbed the gully. It was about late afternoon by then and we were considering doing SEWS as well, but decided we didn't want to risk being on the rock after dark. We got back to the car and whipped out some beers, when surprise, we ran into Stebbi, who had just gotten blizzarded [and preemptively avalanched] off the Ptarmigan Traverse. They were planning to do Cutthroat, and we had plans for Silver Star.

The next morning we awoke to a full parking lot. We met up with our third rope member, only to discover that the bastards at REI would not rent her crampons because she was an incompetent idiot who may try to put the crampons on high heels or flip flops or otherwise incompatable shoes. She brought a fourth, and more importantly, a second car. Instead we decided to do the traverse from Cutthroat Lake TH to Cutthroat Pass to Rainy Pass. We camped at Cutthroat Pass in the snow. Gorgeous sunrise and sunset, great stars. Great views of Cutthroat and the Molar. In the morning, Betsy, Ralph, and I scrambled up Peak 7552 as Lan chose to sleep in late. We were treated to great views of Baker, Shuksan, and Eldorado, among the many others. As we glissaded back to camp at 9 AM, it started raining. We hastily packed up and hiked out to Rainy Pass. Route-finding through the mature forests was a breeze, and there wasn't much avy debris to avoid.