Washington Trip Part Duece

While in Washington, I had the chance to do some climbing, alpine style, for my birthday. Talk about awesome. The climb we did was the Beckey Route, on the Liberty Bell Mountain (the right most peak on the photo). It was a technically easy, 3 or 4 pitch climb, about a 5.5, or 5.6 with a few 5.7 moves. The Liberty Bell is 7,700 ft in elevation at the peak, and was first ascended September 27, 1946.
Alpine climbing is different to the style of climbing I have been doing. I have been climbing in a climbing gym, and on some sport routes. With those styles of climbing, once you finish a route, your belayer lowers you down to where you started the route. This climb finished with an incredible 360 degree view of the area around it, and then a long rappel (180 or so feet in this case). Its pretty sweet to actually get to the top of something.

This area of the state has alot of forest fires going on at this time, so it was good to get above the smoke, and in the clear air. You can see in this photo how smokey the air was... and in the video below you can glimpse the smoke plume from on of the fires in the area.

Thanks Janice and Scott for taking me on this, and for teaching me alpine style, and some trad protection.

Hit the play button below to get a 360 degree pan of from the peak.