Colchuck Balanced Rock - The West Face 5.11+

CBR. The West Face route goes up the center of the wall through
the obvious triangular roof.

There's something cleansing about a good day of suffering. I often feel refreshed after having an experience that forces me into new realms of exhaustion or discomfort. It's what drives me to go camp out in the desert under some of the worst conditions imaginable, and occasionally it's what drives me toward really long days in the mountains.

As is often the case this time of year, a late-summer apathy was creeping into my thoughts. After so many months of training and climbing and neglecting other aspects of my life I get complacent, or bored, or something. My thoughts drift toward other, far-off adventures and I have a hard time living in the moment. Re-focusing myself can require a monumental effort. One effort that I set my sights on earlier in the year (when my motivation was much higher) was the West Face of Colchuck Balanced Rock, car-to-car, in a day.

Generally I avoid long approaches like the plague. I'm a rock climber - if I enjoyed endless slogs I would be a mountaineer. The past couple years I hiked into the Enchantments before the permit season started, taking a much more leisurely two (or more) days to hike and climb. This year the permit season was extended so that it began before any of the peaks in the range were in climbing condition. Anyone who lives in the Northwest knows what a pain in the ass it is to get a permit for the Enchantments, so that leaves us climbers focusing more on single-day objectives.

The West Face is one of the all-time classic hard alpine routes in the Cascades. It certainly isn't the hardest climbing I've done, but combined with the long, steep approach it would make for a very difficult day. A worthy challenge to shake off the August apathy.

Reed and I drove to the Stuart Lake trailhead on Friday night and slept at the trailhead. The alarm went off at 5:00 AM and was greeted with plenty of bitching and moaning. We packed up and left the trailhead at 5:30. The first leg of the approach is the hike up to Colchuck Lake. The trail starts out leisurely until the angle kicks back, gaining another 2000-something feet to the lake. We made it to the lake in about 1:40, a good time in any regard. Colchuck Lake might be one of the most perfect places on this face of this earth, so we took a decent break there to snap some photos and eat a snack.

Dragontail

At that point the approach leaves the main trail, crossing the dam at the North end of the lake and taking off uphill, following a steep climber's trail. This trail is unrelenting with very few switchbacks, and the best way to get it done is just zen out and ignore your burning calves. It seemed to go on forever but after only 50 minutes and maybe 1500 feet of elevation gained we were at the boulder field below CBR, and I was reminded how special this place is. It might be Washington's best kept secret, since there is no reason for non-climbers to go up there. We were lucky that there was no one else up there except one party working on a new route to the left of the West Face.

A somewhat sketchy scramble brought us to the start of the route and we were off, shaking out our still-burning legs when we could. A long 5.10c pitch followed by an even longer 5.9 pitch (one of the best pitches of 5.9 in the range?) brought us to the base of the first of a series of three 5.11 pitches, the Enduro Corner. No move on this 190-ft pitch is harder than 5.10c, but after the tiring approach the sustained laybacking definitely got my heart rate up. I managed to hang on and onsight the pitch.

Reed following the Enduro Corner

The second 5.11 pitch involves a bizarre traverse out the left side of the huge, triangular roof (the most obvious feature of the wall). Reed took the lead and made it through with a little bit of french-free. I was able to barely make it through. Wearing a backpack on this pitch was a mistake.

One of the coolest belay ledges around, with a great view of Mt. Stuart.

Third 5.11 pitch, the true crux. By this point in the day the cumulative fatigue was really building. I looked up at the roof above with a feeling of dread. But it was my lead, so off I went. Most of the pitch is a really pleasant (although somewhat sharp) 5.9 hand crack. I climbed through that to the start of the crux, a powerful 3-move sequence around a roof. I placed a cam, started to pull into the roof, but the will wasn't there. I let slip my least favorite four-letter word, "take". So that was that. I wasn't attached to the idea of onsighting the route, and Reed and agreed at the beginning of the day we just wanted to get up the thing and back to the car in one piece. Besides, this leaves me something to go back for and now I know the crux moves.

Colchuck Lake taunted us far below.

Following the crux were about three more pitches of climbing but only one of them worried us. The "hardest 5.8 in Washington", a bizarre chimney/offwidth/handcrack feature that some people feel is the crux of the climb. I did manage to onsight that pitch with a combination of some of the wildest moves I have done on granite (knee lock - double hand jam - cut feet - heel hook inside the chimney - 180 degree spin - knee bar......WHAT??). Some of my proudest climbing of the day. We trudged up the final 300ish feet of climbing to the summit, took a short rest and started the descent.

WTF WAS THAT? 5.8????

We made it to the Lake before dark and finished the rest of the hike by  headlamp. 17 hours after leaving the car and 4.5 hours after standing on the summit we stumbled back to the parking lot, very seriously asking ourselves why the hell we did that to ourselves.

Dragontail treated us to some mighty fine alpenglow on the hike down.

That plus a couple weeks off has me ready to take on the Fall sending season. On top of that, Stephanie and I have an exciting new project. We just bought a cargo van that we are in the process of converting to a camper, with the intent of leaving to travel Central and South America by land sometime in 2018! I am excited and terrified but getting in over my head is what I do best.