Liberty Bell/Beckey Route

Date:7/15/2006
Route:Liberty Bell/Beckey Route
Difficulty:5.6
Climbers:Richard Conner, Leigh Conner,Eric Robinson,Chris Kirsten

On Saturday morning, I met Eric at the Ash Way Park and Ride at 5:00am for our ride up to Washington Pass to do Liberty Bell. We arrived at the Blue Lake Trailhead at 8:00am and began sorting our racks and gear that we were bringing. We started up and eventually hit the climbers trail that took us up towards the Liberty Bell/Concord/Early Winter Spires.

We encountered some people that apppeard to loose a member of their party. We continued up a fairly narrow gully with some third class scrambling. It was fairly challenging in a couple areas but we arrived at the Liberty Bell/Concord Tower notch at around 10:30. Once at the notch, there was one party ahead of us on the route. We geared up, and got into position to head up next. We saw a soloist by himself trying to do the route. Oddly enough we ran into another Seattle Mounties party that was doing Concord (Ken Hahn and Sam Uzwack).

The first pitch allowed us an interesting variation from the face route. A small wormhole/chimney went up about 20 feet and up onto a ledge. I led the second pitch, a 5.6 blocky chimney, somewhat awkward. Pitch 3 was a combination of friction climbing, with some underclinging cracks and the infamous "fingertip" traversse to the left. The final pitch is fairly "non interesting" since it's mainly a scramble. The crux move on the last pitch was a 12ft, unprotectable friction slab of granite with one very comitting move. The rest of the the fourth pitch was just a scramble to the summit. We all moved fairly quickly and were on top in about 2 hours. (averaging about 30 minutes per pitch).

On the descent we ran into a traffic jam at the main rappell anchor. We waited for about 30 minutes for everyone to get down. 2 bombproof hangers cemented to the west face was ourway down with a single double rope rappell. I ended up implementing an autoblock backup on my rappell since it was such a long rappell. We all got down and back to the cars at around 6:30pm, at which time we split up and Eric and I ended up feasting on Mexican Food in Sedro Wooley and enjoying a couple Margaritas discussing our accomplishment and planning our next trip.