July 6-7, 2003 - Liberty Crack - Brad Young On Sunday afternoon (July 6), I picked up Brad at the Sea-Tac airport in my dad's pickup truck. We drove drove north on I-5, bought some groceries, and arrived at Washington Pass in the early evening. Taking advantage of the long daylight hours, we hiked up to the short snowslope below Liberty Crack and cached our gear for the next day. We found the direct trail while descending. We were lucky to run into Mark Allen at the trailhead parking lot for the west side routes - he told us there was no snow in the descent gully, so we did not need to haul our ice axes up the routes. He also invited us to stay at a nice campsite near Mazama; we drove there and enjoyed talking with him and his 4 clients. On July 7, we got up at first light (4:15am) and tried for a one-day ascent of the route. We were concerned about weather, and figured we should go all out right away, in case the weather deteriorated in the remaining days of our trip. Below is a description of the pitches, which I posted to cascadeclimbers.com . I hope to add more details later. --------------- Buckaroo's beta is very accurate. I did the route on July 7 2003, and I can offer a few minor additions: >1st pitch a1-a2 or 2- 5.11a moves We did a "0th pitch" by soloing across the 3rd class from the left side, and setting up a belay on some gear below the long thin crack. >2nd pitch straightforward a1 unless you've never aided >a roof (or 5.13) I was surprised to see the start of this pitch was entirely fixed with pins and a big bolt to reach the roof crack one move from the lip. With "old school" ratings, roofs always get A2 even if the gear is solid like on this pitch. >3rd pitch fixed a1 or 5.11d-R long runout on sparse pro. >the "manky" bashies on the 3rd pitch have been there >for over 10 years. There were 2 moderately old fixed copperheads in a row, which looked pretty good. Also a fixed bashed small stopper that looked pretty new (i.e. 2003). As mentioned in other posts in this thread, there is one pretty solid hook move (standard Chouinard/Black Diamond skyhook) in an enhanced piton hole. "Old school" ratings give A3 for any hook move, but probably it is fairer to call it A2. Many fixed pins. >4th a1 or 5.10b This is mostly a friendly 5.9 hand crack, then the crack gets thin and the rock somewhat crumbly at the end of the pitch where I aided a few moves. A 70' pitch. >5th 5.8 (FULL 50m pitch, conserve gear) Perfect description, although the topo we had said 5.9 and my partner didn't disagree. >6th 5.10a (one move) or a1 (rotten block) Another full 50m pitch for us, with my partner belaying on top of the big block. There was a scary semidetached flake below the block, too. >the 3 button bolt "belay" above the rotten block is a >decoy. If you keep going straight up the dihedral >there's a nice fat gear belay with a good stance. The >button bolt "belay" is an old rap station used to get >down to a bivy ledge when the thing was being seiged. We belayed at the 3-bolt belay (all 1/4" buttonheads, but in fairly decent shape; it was the first belay anchor without at least one big bolt). There is good gear to back up the bolts as well. We couldn't go any higher because it was a full 50m to there. It was a nice place to sit on top of the block, so I thought it was a good place to stop. It appears that some people stop about 40' below, where there is a small stance and a single 1/4" bolt (a second 1/4" bolt is out of reach on the wall to the right) but good gear in the corner. This lower belay looked inferior, because the next pitch would get a lot of rope drag going around the block. >7th 5.10c (one move) or a1 We did this as an 80' pitch, up the slick but low angle dihedral, and stopped at the 2-bolt belay 10' below the small overhang with the 5.10 move. Here you stand on a thin semi-detached flake. This was the "2 bad 1/4" bolts" belay mentioned in some trip reports, so my partner backed it up by clipping the haul line to 2 fixed pins at the overhang. Before I jumared the next pitch, I removed one of the bolts (a 1/4" x 1") and replaced it with a 3/8" x 2.25" stainless and a stainless "ASCA stamped" hanger. To remove the old bolt, I used a "tuning fork", which is a #4 Lost Arrow with a 5/16" slot hacksawed down the middle - a very effective tool. I would have replaced the second bolt as well, but the carbide tip on my drill bit got chipped and I had trouble even finishing the first bolt.... >8th , 9th, 10th 5.6 (can be simuled) > >11th 5.9 (60m required if you belay from the tree >ledge.) We did these pitches as follows: 8th 5.10 move at the roof, then 5.6 ramp to belay at trees below an obvious chimney. 9th 5.6 chimney, with a couple of hard steep moves at the end to reach the belay ledge with tree (I pulled on the slings on the tree). Awkward to follow this pitch on jumars, because of the pack we had and spare rope loops hanging up in the crack. 10th 5.9 fun pitch up a steepening corner. Near the end of the pitch, I moved into a 5.7 hand crack on the left, ignoring fixed pins in the corner on the right. I belayed on a sloping ledge in a small chimney in the left crack system, but made a belay anchor in the corner to the right. 11th 5.8 steep corner, with a few lieback moves to reach a long easy ramp. Full 50m pitch to reach belay tree at top of ramp. From here, a 180' 4th class traverse left on ledges reaches a big left-facing corner, where gear can be dumped to bag the summit (one 20' 5.4 slab can be soloed safely). Then downclimb 40' from the gear cache to reach the first of 2 rappel anchors into the notch/gully.