Washington is Awesome

If I were to move anywhere else in this country, it would be to Washington state. From the moment that we got there, it started to feel a little bit more like home, probably mostly because everything was green again. No more of this high desert. Also we have just gotten good vibes from most people we ran into. And there are mountains like no other.

Green! With Mt. St. Helens in the background.

Washington is also good at dealing out the misery, just like the Adirondacks. For the first couple days here that we drove by Mt. St. Helens and then went to Mt. Rainier (Rainyer?) We could barely see anything because it just rained and we were up in the clouds...

On the slopes of Mt. Rainier...

The puddle our tent was in...

From Mt. Rainier we went to the Olympic Peninsula where it continued to rain the whole time we were there. We may have slightly forgotten how to deal with rain, when we set up our tent in a spot that looked nice the night before, and then ended up in 3 inches of water after it rained all night....

We went to the Hoh Rainforest, which is a coniferous rain forest. Kinda neat with everything covered in moss. It was nice to slow down a bit and do a couple short walks really taking our time.  Since it was cloudy out all the time, there was no where to go to get good views.

The next day (the forecast was for it to finally clear up) we went for a hike to Marmot pass. Well, it rained some more, but fortunately there were tons of wildflowers out, and a very cool river to walk by.

The Olympics were a great place to chill out and spend a few rainy days. We even got a day of library time in to catch up on blogging (somewhat) and do a little bit of planning for the next month.  From the Olympics, we took the ferry over to Seattle, thought about stopping... but then decided cities are not our thing so we drove on to the North Cascades National park. Here, we were hoping to get a good backpacking trip in, but unfortunately found that summer does not really start until about August here. We were confined to a couple day hikes, which we made our peace with. Cascade Pass was actually quite cool.

This is in the beginning of July!

We did another day hike to 4th of July Pass. This one was cool, but not nearly as cool as Cascade Pass, so have another photo of Cascade Pass.

Looking back in the direction that we came from

The Liberty Bell

After our two day hikes in the Cascades we decided to move on to lower elevations and do some sport climbing at Mazama, which is on the way to Glacier National Park in Montana. On the way, we randomly decided to stop at this Washington Pass overlook... and were amazed! We had no idea that this existed...

View from the Washington Pass Overlook

We camped at a campground just a little bit past this. I wander over to the site next to ours to see if they have change... and it turns out that Dave and Melda are some very nice people and hardcore climbers/skiers/mountaineers. They started raving about the climbing in this area and told us of the best and most classic climbs.  The Liberty Bell is a super classic.

The next day was our Mazama climbing day, and we decided to wander down into town to see what information we could get both about Mazama and also the Washington Pass climbing. We left the store with two climbing guides :)  Mazama was great vacation climbing, and after 3 days in a row of moderate hikes and  lots of travel, we were ready for a rest day. By rest, I mean walk in 5 minutes to the climbs and do a bunch of single pitch sport climbing. The climbing was pretty nice, although not something to draw you in from too far away.

Leading a climb at Mazama

We finished climbing that day early enough to prepare for a climb up the Liberty Bell the following day.  We planned to climb Becky's route, which is a super popular 4 pitch 5.7- route that gets you to the top of the mountain. So this meant having everything packed up the night before and being at the trailhead by about 7am.

Up the gulley

Hiking in and up to the start of the route was no small feat. It was about 1.5 miles on a maintained trail, then the climbers trail turns off and just goes right up a loose slope, which still has some snow on it. Then you go up a gulley for a while which is full of loose rocks. Fortunately we were the first party up that for the day, otherwise you need to be aware of possible rock fall from the people above you.

Can barely see the Liberty Bell, right in the middle behind the more prominent towers here.

Fortunately we had brought the climbing guide to the area, because the start of the climb was not exactly easy to find. Another party got to the base of the climb at the same time as us, but we let them go ahead since we did not want to rush and they were in a hurry.

Belayer at the start of the route

Nico following on pitch 1

The climbing was pretty nice, especially the chimney system on pitch 2. Fortunately the chimneys here were way easier and less scary than those on Half Dome, and it was quite a bit of fun going through it. The climbing went smooth all the way to the top.

Doing some route finding before heading up pitch 3.

Once at the top, the views were totally amazing! This is actually a tick box for me for this trip. One thing that I really wanted to do was to rock climb up a mountain. The North Cascades are cool in that in order to actually see the mountains, you need to get up in them. There are no places that you can drive to that would give you views like this.

Panorama from the top

I was this excited:

It was really amazing to have seen this mountain two days before, think: "wow that looks amazing, it would be so cool to climb something like that", then meet the right people, find the book, and make it happen.

I've posted quite a few pictures from the Cascades, and they are certainly worth checking out here.
Photos from once we got to Washington to the Olympic Peninsula are here.

Now we are almost to Glacier National Park... and the adventure continues.