John Frieh, Dave Burdick and I were going to head out to Montana / Wyoming for some ice goodness, but due to the weather we decided to stay at our local NW crag and do some climbing on the NE Face of Dragontail Peak just outside of Leavenworth Washington.
Dave drove to Levenworth (2.5 hrs) while John and I drove together from PDX (5 hrs) we encountered cheep gas prices $1.77 which has been very nice. We all met up at 8:00 pm and headed to the trailhead to sort gear and grab a few short hours of sleep. Temps at the trailhead where nice and cold in the (20's) and clear skies.
3:00 am my alarm sounded, I love alpine climbing!! We brewed up some water for drinks and choked down some food, usually I am not that hungry at 3:00 am so it is always a forced breakfast. We hit the trail at 4:00 am and blasted to the base of the route by headlamp in 4.5 hrs. We started into the couloir at 8:30 am for some good climbing. As we stared with some M(fun) mix solo climbing the route just got better and better as we ascended. As we made our way up we found everything from fun ice pitches, high quality mixed climbing and waist deep wallowing. We reached the summit col at 1:00 pm for a easy 70 meter rape onto the glacier. Once on the glacier (south side of Dragontail) we headed down to Asgard pass for the final and most loose / slippery descent which seemed to never end. Getting back to Colchuck lake at 3:30 pm. We gatherd our gear that we stashed at the lake and headed back to the car arriving at 6:30 pm, 14.5 hrs on the go. Just another good weekend...
View a Trip Report here at Cascadeclimbers
View all photos in our Picas web album.
Daniel
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