Elevation Gain: 601m
Distance: 7.96km
Total Time: 7 hours 35 minutes
Date: October 11th, 2024
It’s that time of year when winter starts to creep into the alpine and you’re forced to face the snow head on or escape further afield. With an upcoming long weekend of immaculate weather, I was prepared to make the plunge with some overnight exploration around the Texas Creek area. To take even better advantage of the weather I even took the Friday off to avoid the incoming storm on Monday. Meanwhile, my friend Alex also had the Friday off and we started to scheme up plans. I was pretty set on Texas Creek, but Alex finally tempted me into Washington Pass with the offer of an alpine climb up North Early Winter Spires (NEWS), followed by Golden Horn and Tower Mountain the following day. I honestly didn’t think I’d be getting any more alpine climbs in this year and that alone was enough to convince me.
Alex had his eyes on the 5.11a West Face route up NEWS and after reading through the beta it looked achievable. I’d never on-sighted 11a before, but given how perfect the crux route looked, a few clean falls wouldn’t be the end of the world to get up it. In the planning stages we decided on a coin toss for who would get the crux pitch. The other climber would get the splitter 10c pitch above and a cool looking 10a/9 undercling traverse before the crux. There’d be no losses either way.
With that, we got a 4am start on the Friday morning and drove the 3.5 hours out to Washington Pass. We were on the trail by 8am, making a brisk pace to avoid freezing. Early October mornings can be a harsh reminder of the impending winter.
I was feeling gassed on the otherwise dead-easy approach and was happy to have it out of the way just an hour later. We ditched our gear and racked up and then Alex broke from the coin toss plan and generously offered whichever pitch I wanted. I had a feeling I’d fall on the crux pitch, but I was keen to give it a try anyways and Alex was happy to let me have it. That meant Alex would take the first pitch, a 5.8 chimney and some face climbing up cracks. Now geared up Alex lead up the first run out section and then gracefully manoeuvred through the chimney and out of sight. In the mean time the cool October temperatures nearly chilled me out, but Alex climbed quickly and I was seconding up before resorting to shivering.
Alex wisely linked the the short tree scramble section of pitch two to takes us to the base of pitch 3. It was now my lead and this part was more 5.8 climbing through an interesting blocky corner up to a narrow ledge with a horn to sling. I found this part quite fun and a great warm up to the climbing above, although some of the rock required some attention. Once I climbed up to where the horn should be, I found a small stump of rock instead. I had to consult with Alex to make sure we were on route as nothing matched the description of said horn. Either it had broken off or climbers were unwisely slinging a very very small block of rock. I didn’t want to belay Alex on that so I peeked around the corner and found a perfect crack to build an anchor off of. With that out of the way Alex seconded up.
The next pitch was a burly layback up a #6 to #7 crack and then an airy under cling traverse out to the crux pitch. Again Alex, lead a clean pitch up through the layback and out across the undercling. I cleaned the anchor and pulled hard up the layback up to easier terrain. The undercling section was less sustained than either of us expected and fairly straight forward to pull through. I reached the anchor with Alex and now had the first look at the crux pitch. At face value it didn’t look all bad! There’s nothing left to do but go for it. I racked up and then pulled myself a few feet above the anchor to place my first piece. Above me I spotted several key looking foot rests and took a minute to plan the moves. I was feeling collected and ready to go for it, so I pulled off the first finger locks and pulled through the sequences without much trouble. I placed gear at waist height to avoid stealing my next finger pods and before I knew it was through a balancey layback and out of the crux section. I climbed as high as I could until the crack petered out. Here there was supposed to be a bolt and a 10a face traverse. I found none, but the moves looked doable to reach the crack system climber’s left. I made a reachy 10b face move out to the crack and finished the pitch at last!
Looking below I finally spotted the bolt several meters below me. Nonetheless, the line I took worked out nicely and was well protected. I was psyched to have sent the pitch clean! It felt much easier than any of the 11’s I had tried around Squamish, but it was also more technical than burly. Alex also ascended with ease and he undoubtedly would have sent it the crux on lead as well. Now came the splitter 10c crack above. Alex cruised up and I heard multiple exclamations about the immaculate cracks above. I was excited to follow up and found amazing finger locks with on techy section 1/4 of the way up. Above that it was bomber finger locks and thin hands all the way to the top. The cherry on top was an amazing pocketed slab traverse to exit out to the summit. In 5 pitches we had found one of our best climbs ever and it finished with panoramic views of Washington Pass to boot.
After scoping out the summit for a bit, we headed down to start the rappels. There are two descent routes off of the NEWS. The old one takes you skiers left off the summit (if facing west) and down the gully between SEWS and NEWS. Meanwhile a new line goes directly down the West face. The new line reportedly had very clean rappels so we aimed for that. However, locating the first rappel anchor was challening. We eventually resorted to using the first rappel anchor for the old rappel line and lowering down the west face to find the next anchor. Sure enough it was just skier’s left of the exit crack on the last pitch. Once that was located things went very smoothly. We had 4 clean rappels all the way to the base. Although, the rope did get snagged on the last rappel in scrambling terrain. Alex managed to climb up and free it while I retrieved our stashed gear.
We then headed down the manicured climber’s trail and ran into a herd of fluffy mountain goats feeding around the larches. A perfect cap to a perfect climb! An hour later we were at the car and headed into Mazama for some well earned sandwiches and a proper night of rest for the next day.
