Eastside Peaks July 7-10 2009

Here are the series of trips that make up my son Aaron's and my 23 day North Cascades mountain trip. Hope you can live with Picasa links

-To wake up early in Colorado and deal all the transitions to where you are
starting up a peak in Washington by 4:15 that afternoon, one that involves 3,000
feet of ascent and a couple of pitches of rock to 5.5........We hate travel days
and as such we squeezed in the South Arete of South early Winter Spire. We
hooked in with Courtney, DB, their pal Andy, Sonny and his pal Mark, several of
them joining us for the climb

The weather was rainy over in the western mountains, in the area we like best,
with its true alpine flavor. But when it does rain there, we can usually find
fine fare to amuse ourselves on the east side, here up around Washington Pass.
We call it "alpine light." Sometimes the rain spills out far enough east. It did
the 2nd day. We were on the South Buttress of Cutthroat Peak. This 8 pitch 5.8
is not sustained, but with wet rock, it was plenty interesting. a serious day.

The next day most of us ran the ridge from Copper Mt., to Pika Peak and then
beyond, over a 1 mile knife edge, toward Blue Lake Peak. All summitted two
peaks. Andy was swift enough to get to the third peak, before the lightning,
thunder and hail chased us off the ridge, just 100 feet below the summit. Aaron
felt and heard his ice ax humming on his back. Not good!! Still it was a grand
day, as we got soaked to the bone, on descent.

We could see from our summits, that the weather was clearing to the west, so we
ran up Wallaby Peak the next morning, before transitioning west, to the heart of
the range.

Pictures?

http://picasaweb.google.com/aramv14/...ksJuly7102009#