Launching into the Unknown
Loading ...“I would like the experience at some point this year of launching up a wall and into the unknown…”
The above was written by my friend Rad Roberts last spring, acutely distilling an alpinist’s desire for exploration into one line of email. But desire is a foe ill-suited to stormy Northwest weather. So after a summer of missed chances, a forecasted few days of sun was all we needed to put plans into action.
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laWe left Seattle at 5AM, en route to Sloan Peak (7,800′). The Southwest face was 1,500′ of solid-looking stone in an accessible location. It had never been climbed…
Rad so strongly wanted to launch into the unknown, so after a few miles of old-growth and alpine meadows, I let him take the first pitch. A mossy chimney leads to who-knows-where. From atop the chimney progress slows, but movement is interjected with whoops of joys and grunts of desperation. I prepare to get sandbagged. Instead of the vegetated corner, Rad’s following a line of previously-unseen –and overhanging– splitter cracks. Forty more feet and he’s off belay, 15 meters of slack pulled up, and I’m on.
I reacquaint myself with backpack-clad squirming, lean a right shoulder into the wall and pray the rubber on my comically blown-out shoes will adhere for a few more moves. The climbing is phenomenal, and well-protected. I trundle some blocks and barely hang on between desperate finger locks.
We trace a line up thin cracks and delicately-featured rock. Dodging left around a huge roof, Rad dances up a right-facing dihedral, belaying along a major ledge system 400′ up.
We survey our situation: time, water, location… and I’m off. With another steep unknown wall looming, it’s time for some speed.
The rock here is even cleaner. My pitch flows without hesitation. This is why we climb. Reach up for the jam, stem out to the knob, 3 more moves to a stance and gear…At 50 meters I ease onto a pedestal, and I’m staring at a rusty Lost Arrow Piton! We suspect someone had come across the long ledge which splits the face and also belayed atop the pillar.
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