Burgundy Spire, North Face, August 26-27th, 2000
Saturday, mid-afternoon, Matt and I set off for Burgundy Spire from highway 20. At 8400ft, the spire is one of the highest technical peaks in the Cascades: the easiest summit route involves 3 pitches of 5.8 (well, ok, there is a 5.7+ route, but it is much longer, and apprently involves some very loose rock). I was a bit apprehensive about our undertaking, but in the hands of rockclimber extraordinaire Matt Cary, I wasn't really that worried.This isn't Burgundy Spire, but one of the towers of Vasiliki ridge, just north of the Wine Spires
The approach led us up about 4000 vertical feet of forest terrain and scree gullies. I had been to this area 3 years previous, one of my first trips in the Cascades. That times, some friends and I had attempted Silver Star by the standard route, which involves crossing over Burgundy Col. Burgundy Col is also the starting point for Burgundy Spire, so I knew the approach well... so I thought.
We quickly lost the climbers path, and headed up what we hoped was the right forested rib. Eventually, we decided it wasn't, and headed over one. Two and a half thousand feet of unpleasantly steep open forest and loose dirt hiking later, the terrain flattened out and we finally intersected the real climbers path, which we promptly lost again on the way up the scree slopes to the col. We ended up in rather sketchy loose sand on crumbly rock, but eventually arrived on top. Immediately below were two climbers sitting on a snow patch, melting snow. It had taken us almost four hours to here. The wind was strong, and it was cold. The couple told us to come down to them... they were totally out of the wind.
Down out of the wind, we chatted with them - they had just come down from the spire. They had only good things to say: the rock was good, the route was pretty mellow, good belay ledges, doesn't take too long. The only bad part: it was extremely windy and cold. Nonetheless, this set my mind at ease... I was looking forward to this.
Matt examines the route from our bivy Saturday evening
As the sun set, Matt and I studied the North Face from the col, trying to match the features to the Beckey route description. This was pretty useless.
Throughout the night, we were treated to occasionally starry pitches, alternating with clouds. The summit of Ares tower, on the other side col, was always visible though. More disconcerting than the weather was a rodent intent on eating our food and shitting everywhere. I heard him trying to get in my food bag, which was right beside me. I knocked it with my arm, and poked my head out. There, silhouetted in the starlight on the rock windbreak, was the rodent in question(a pika?). I finally moved my food bag inside my bivy sac, and he then bothered Matt for the rest of the night. The morning revealed new poop pellets everywhere.
The morning also revealed more clouds. Still some sun patches in the valleys though. Knowing that today's forecast called for partly sunny skies, we decided to wait it out, and sleep in.
The sandy ledges below the main face (small unnamed spire in the background)
By late morning, things had still not improved. In fact, the occasional snow flurry swept through the col. The wind however, had abated somewhat.
We decided to head up the first two easy pitches anyway... hopefully, by then, the beginning of the hard climbing, the skies would have cleared.
The climbing started right above our bivy spot. Matt led up most of a rope length, and then I continued up on a traverse, to the sandy ledges between Burgundy and Paisano Pinnacle. Another short class 3 pitch led us to a sheltered nook in which to make some decisions. The weather had not improved. There were more snow squalls, occasionally coating the rock. The lichen was now wet, making any sort of friction moves a dicey affair. Sitting at this notch, I looked behind me toward a what must have been a deep gap between Paisano Pinnacle and the main wall of Burgundy: there was a constant stream of snow moving quickly upward in a vertical column, kept in constant movement from the strong winds blowing up the spire.
Matt starts up the 200ft lower north face.
Eventually, we continued along some more class 4 ledges to the start of the steep climbing. "2 pitches of honest 5.8" says Jim Nelson. Matt led up nearly a full rope length to a decent belay spot, and I followed. My hands were totally numb from the cold damp rock. It didn't take long at each belay until I started shivering, and during the entire climb, I was wearing all the clothing I had. Occasionally, the sun poked out and made things seem friendly, and I suppose this is what made us keep continuing.
The second steep pitch had some very "honest" 5.8 moves. It took a while, but Matt cranked through this section, and I followed, grunting my way up.
The route we took
The route description and diagram of the top pitch, which we had carefully copied out of the Beckey book, had been forgotten back at camp. Oops. So far, the route-finding had been pretty obvious, but now we were on ledges 150 feet below the summit block, and the way above was confusing. We vaguely matched features of the rock to the "corkscrew" route, and knew we had to traverse west. The obvious way was a large ledge, and then a scramble down through a cave, onto a long series of ledges. But we didn't remember any part of the route-description that mentioned descending some (it turns out it actually did mention this), and the cave was such a notable feature that we thought it would be mentioned, if it was the right way. Nonetheless, this looked like the only feasible option, but it put the summit further above us. The weather had not improved any... in fact, it had worsened... we hadn't seen any sun breaks for a while. Nonetheless, we went up to the base of what should have been the final summit pitch. There was a scary arching off-width high above, but that didn't look easy enough to be the the 5.8 or 5.7 variation recalled from the topo, and it didn't go all the way up. Matt utilitized his clever route-finding device: look for spots where the lichen has been worn off by previous climbers. There was a large patch of rock lacking lichen, but it was a smooth slab with no protection opportunities. Hmm.
Phil looking up at the final summit pitch
I belayed Matt as he climbed up some 4th class ground for a better view. It was really exposed to the elements here, with the wind full on us. Every once in a while I glanced back at the menacing dark clouds moving about. Thick wisps of snow fall could be seen in every direction. I then noticed that thick clouds had boiled up against the east side of the Wine Spire-Vasiliki ridge. This was a new development. They completely obscured the east side of the ridge.
Matt reported back that nothing looked obvious from where he was, 40 feet above me. I suggested that we think about going down. He replied that that might be a good idea. Before he rapped down to me, he need to take an emergency dump. Then the weather really moved in.
Weather moving in...
Visibility dropped to a hundred feet or so, and the snow started coming down hard. Matt got down as fast as possible, and we continued the traverse back up to the ledges atop the 5.8 pitches. In a very short time, an inch of snow had accumulated, sticking to the rock, and more importantly, caking the summit slabs... it was good we hadn't continued.
We knew that to get down safely, we'd have to stay concentrated and be extremely diligent, or we could definitely epic. If the ropes were to stick on the now very wet 5.8 pitches, that would totally suck, to put it lightly. We just stayed focused on the task at hand.
Descending after the mini-blizzard
After the first rap, the world suddenly became more friendly. The snow stopped, and the sun came out for the first time in several hours. The snow that had so quickly accumulated began to melt. We had awesome views west over a sea of clouds, with sun rays shining through them. The rappels down to the lower bench went without a hitch, and we made steady downward progress.
Of course, this is alpine climbing, so the ropes did stick eventually, but it was lower down on 4th class terrain, and Matt was able to quickly climb back up and free them. Once again, the weather had moved in, and it was dark and cold and windy again. We finally hit flat ground around 7pm.
We ate some quick food back at our bivy, pack up, and hoofed it out. After a grueling steep descent, but this time on a trail for most of the way (still managed to lose it in Burgundy Basin), we arrived back at the road some time between 9:30 and 10pm.