Burgundy Spire, North Face

My new work situation is the best!

I have every other Tuesday off.  Yes, off.  I've reached out through CascadeClimbers.com and found a new local climbing partner in Mount Vernon.  His name is Eric Krumland.  He is a little younger than me, also new to Mount Vernon having recently returned from a yearlong stint in Belgium as a missionary.  As a result of spending a year in Europe, he's done a ton of sport climbing, but is now psyched to push his skills in the alpine realm.  And he happens to have a love affair with Washington Pass, kinda like me!

I'd never done the random partner thing, aside from doing countless Mountaineers trips with people I didn't know.  So in our initial exchange of emails, I lowered the bar from my current tick list.  I suggested something easy like Spontaneity Arete, Kangaroo Temple.  He countered by suggesting something harder.  We agreed upon Burgundy Spire.  I had a little trepidation, but ultimately agreed once I realized that no matter how bad he was I could get us up the route by leading every pitch.  All he needed to be able to do was belay me safely.  And it turns out he's not bad, he's actually super good!

We met up at 4am Tuesday morning and hit the road in my father-in-law's Mazda Miata.  We had a really nice conversation on the way out.  We had the usual exchange of climbing history in current interests.  But then we talked about God.  It was really cool to finally be heading out into the mountains with someone who shares my worldview.  When we were ready to head out onto the approach from the car, it was simply natural to suggest that we stop and pray for our day, and it felt so good!

This shot was taken on the hike out, but you get the idea.  Burgundy Spire is on the far left.

The Wine Spires are a group of granite towers that exist in a tight group extending along the ridge coming off the Northwest spur of Silver Star Mountain.  There are four of them: Burgundy, Chianti, Pernod, and Chablis.  Burgundy Spire held a unique position for many years.  It, along with Nooksack Tower, was considered one of the most technically difficult summits to attain in the Cascades.  Its easiest route is the North Face, which goes at 5.8. 

We started off the day by losing the approach trail in the woods.  Note to readers who intend to do this climb: descend the talus from the road pullout, then head solidly left into the woods to the creek.  If you're not on a solid trail, you're not in the right place.  We wasted 30 minutes brush-bashing after crossing the creek in a different place before heading cross-country back East and finally encountering the obvious trail.  From there the approach went smoothly.

A lot of people consider the Wine Spires to be too hard to get to to do in a day.  I have no idea why.  We made the approach to Burgundy Col in 2:20 despite 30 minutes of being lost.  We did the entire route and were back to the car around 3:30pm.  I consider this to be a very doable one-day route.  And with longer days, I'd consider doing two routes in the area in a day, such as Paisano Pinnacle first.

View of the North Face route, following polished lighter line.

 We decided to save on time by soloing the first two pitches to the broad ledge between Burgundy and Paisano Pinnacle.  This was mostly 4th class, with a few moves of 5.5.

Eric solos the first pitch, 5.easy

 From there, I led out on the first pitch, probably 5.7.  There are lots of options.  Just pick the path of least resistance.  Some parties head left toward the arete of the North Face.  I chose to head straight up toward the slight notch until I ran out of rope.  Eric took the next pitch, which has a fun 5.8 hand crack section.  This leads you to a giant ledge which slope down to the West.  You crawl through a huge tunnel and then are staring up at several options up.

Start of the technical portion of the route

Eric leads the 5.8 second pitch

 Climber's left has a 5.10a offwidth that looks scary.  Straight up from the end of the ledge is an unprotectable slab that leads to the 5.8 dihedral to offwidth finish.  We couldn't see the offwidth, but could see the obvious dihedral.  But the slab didn't look like it went for sure, so Eric headed up easier but lichen-covered terrain to the right.  The climbing wasn't hard, but a little unsavory, so he ended up building an anchor and bringing me up.  I decided to traverse left to get back to the really fun-looking dihedral.  I think that was a good choice.

Slightly off-route on lichen-covered terrain.  I think this is the 5.7 variation described by Beckey.

 I felt a little guilty, as I had wanted to let him have some of the harder leads on the climb since he was really gunning for them.  But I ended up getting to lead the most aesthetic, challenging, and fun pitch of the climb.  The dihedral was really clean and nice.  The offwidth that followed felt hard to me.  I kept asking if he thought we were maybe on the 5.9 variation described between the 5.10a and the 5.8.  It turns out we were on the 5.8, but maybe I just climbed it poorly or I'm a wuss, or it's sandbagged.  Oh well.  I made it up, and that led us to the true summit.

Fun 5.8 dihedral on the last pitch

Offwidth section at the top of the last pitch

Gruntfest for Eric

 Nice little summit!  We couldn't find a register.  There is a little ridge that leads back West.  I traversed over to take a look, to see if I could see the 5.7 finish.  I think I did, but it looked slightly overhanging at the end, and not as clean as the line we climbed.  I think we made the right choice.

Josh on the summit, with Hwy 20 and Early Winter Spires, Big Kangaroo, and lots of fire haze.

Eric on the summit

Wine Spires, Silver Star Peak

 The haze from the recent forest fires was pretty significant by this point.  We could barely see the Early Winter Spires.  We enjoyed a quick lunch on the summit, then headed down.  We thought we might be able to rap straight back down toward the North Face, skipping the broad ledge traverse.  But we couldn't find an anchor to head down that way, so we ended up reversing the route by a combination of rappels and downclimbing.

View of the fun 5.8 dihedral while rapping the route

 We did have one stuck rope on the second-to-last rappel.  That enabled Eric to extend his enjoyment of the 5.8 crack a little by re-leading it to retrieve the rope.  At this point we saw another party of two that had planned on doing Stuart but got rejected by the fires and this was their backup plan.  Didn't expect to see another party on the route on a Tuesday in late September.

Eric was a great partner.  He is a strong climber and a good guy to have around to rope-gun.  But certainly a little less experienced and slower when it comes to alpine and anchors, etc.  Really enjoyed his company, and hope to climb with him a bunch in the future.