Dan on Condorphamine Addiction, pitch four
This first cragging weekend of the season happened by accident. Dan and I planned on climbing Mt. Hood, but the weather looked wet, so we threw skis, rock gear, and sleeping bags into Dan's car for a day at Leavenworth with Josh and Ben, followed by a day of skiing at Washington Pass with another friend, Mike.
I woke up Saturday morning as we drove through beautiful Tumwater Canyon. Spring is my favorite season in Leavenworth. The creeks are running high with whitewater, the swallows dart in and out of the crags, the valleys are cool and green. Josh and Ben spent the morning doing laps on some classic cracks while Dan and I climbed Condorphamine Addiction, a seven-pitch sport climb on Condor Buttress. The 45 minutes of steep, calf-burning hiking to the base of the route was a rough reintroduction to cragging in Icicle Canyon. You can easily link pairs of pitches with a 60m rope, so we each led a full ropelength of mantel-intensive granite face climbing up to the crux pitch. The hard moves on pitch five had me scratching my head for a few minutes, but I stemmed and smeared up a little scoop of rock to reach the anchors. There were plenty of bolts the whole way, so many that we often skipped them. At the top, we sat in a comfortable sandbox on a ledge and took in the cloudy view of Colchuck Peak before rappelling back to our packs.
There's a ton of rock up near Condor Buttress, so we scrambled around for a while taking photos and planning further climbing explorations.
After a while, we wandered down the trail a little way to Bathtub Dome, to meet up with Josh and Ben. We climbed up two tiers of the crag in separate teams, Dan and I on the left (climbing New Fixtures p1 and Chumstick 2-Step), Josh and Ben on the right (Dave's Arete and New Fixtures p2). We almost convinced Josh to lead on the second tier, but he backed off the wide crack at the start. Ben took over, on what was probably his second gear lead ever. Dan and I stood at the top and gave encouragement:
"Oh, man, I gotta pee, think I can make it over your head?"
"Hey Ben, looks like you need some gear. Here, I'll toss you a couple big cams."
I'd never been out cragging with Josh and Ben, though we've been on other kinds of trips together. I was disappointed that they were taking off for Seattle that night, but Josh supposedly had work to do. (Instead, I later found out, he laid in the grass with his special lady friend.)
The last climb of the day was The Drain, on the third, uppermost tier of Bathtub Dome. It's a really cool pitch: long and exciting, in a prime position right up the middle of the dome, with varied climbing. Horizontal breaks, many filled with tiny puddles of water, split the face above the bolt, until you step left into a quartz-filled dike that has eroded into a hand crack. After Dan and Ben had a go of the route, we packed everything up and headed down. Josh and Ben drove home, we had a beer and burger at Gustav's.
Mike called us that night and said he'd hurt his finger hiking that day (huh?), so he wasn't going to make it out to ski Sunday at Washington Pass. We tried to get Betsy and Michelle to join us for another day of cragging, but they had some excuse or another. Ah well, we'd just have to stay and climb by ourselves on Sunday. At the campground, where every other car had multiple kayaks on the roof, we threw down our bags and were out right away.
Sunday we spent at Clem's Holler, climbing a route each. We were both a little tired after Saturday and the hike to the crag was another steep one. Dan did both pitches of Gun Rack in one lead and I linked pitch one of Honky's Lament with what looks like a newly-bolted second pitch to Poultry in Motion. All fun pitches and good variety. To my shame, I pulled on a bolt on the dirty slab section near the end of my climb. I was not in a great headspace that day. Dan did an admirable lead of State of Delusion at the Nut House crag. I followed, fell once, and pulled on a draw to pass the crux. Ugh.
I'd had enough, so we drove to Safeway for ice cream bars, $2 for six. There were only two left in the box by the time we drove into the Swiftwater picnic area parking lot, but we couldn't finish them and passed them off to a couple of tourists. We walked down the path to a picnic table to sort through our gear and ran into Eric Gratz and Scott Whitomb at the big graffiti-covered boulder. They had a crash pad, so we tried a few boulder problems, then walked across the road to Royal Flush, a hand crack splitting a big boulder. You climb from underneath the boulder, almost fully horizontal, up, out, and around to the top of the rock. I'd always wanted to try Royal Flush, so I hopped right on it and grunted my way up, topping out with bloody hands, much satisfied. Climbing that problem on-sight made my day. We took turns on a few more routes until our arms gave out.
