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| bird | Liberty Ridge!  Date Climbed: Jun 23, 2008 | |
| Great climb. Super lucky with just about perfect conditions. | |
| Posted Oct 31, 2009 7:47 am | ||
| soslaw | Liberty Ridge Date Climbed: Jun 30, 2003 | |
| Climbed with Tom from Seattle under blue bird conditions until we reached reached the schrund below Liberty Cap where the winds howled. Descended via the Emmons glacier. | |
| Posted Aug 1, 2009 2:54 pm | ||
| JHH60 | Nice climb Date Climbed: Jun 15, 2009 | |
| One day hike in, two days on the Ridge, camped on summit saddle, one day down via Emmons. Fairly late in the season with lots of good alpine ice, and lots of bad rockfall! | |
| Posted Jun 23, 2009 1:23 pm | ||
| kevin trieu | tested Date Climbed: May 27, 2009 | |
| did it with Bighornmonkey and Shirley Lam | |
| Posted Jun 22, 2009 1:15 pm | ||
| bighornmonkey | It's all about the weather Date Climbed: May 27, 2009 | |
| It took our party of three (Kevin, Shirley and I) 4 days car-to-car to complete the LIBERTY RIDGE route. That's one more day than the original plan. 4 solid pitches of AI2 and some wild exposure. We had to dig a snow cave at around 12,500ft (between 2 pitches of ice) after high winds and bitter colds prevented further safe progress. The climb went as follows: Day 1: departed from the White River trailhead at 9:00am under warm/sunny conditions. Followed tracks to the edge of the Carbon glacier at 7,000ft. Snow was really soft in the afternoon. Established camp at 5:00pm. Easy day. Day 2: another perfect day. Got on the move at 5:00am, arrived at Thumb Rock 5 hours later. We spent the rest of the day eating/drinking, sheltering from the warm sun, and watching some serac falls all around us. Quite spectacular! At that time we thought the climb was in the bag....wrong! Day 3: The wind picked up during the night. When we woke up at 1:30am the gusts seemed manageable so at 3:30am we were moving up. As we climbed higher, the wind grew exponentially stronger and around 6:00am it was obvious that the upper mountain was plunged in a lenticular cloud. We proceeded with the first ice climbing pitch of the route, with more AI2 to follow. With no shelter in sight and conditions getting worse, we proceeded to dig a snowcave in the glacier at an altitude of around 12,500ft. Weather remained poor the rest of the day and subsequent attempts at climbing the next ice pitch had to be aborted. We resolved to spend the night in our snowcave. Day 4: When we woke up at 6:00am it was 16 degrees F inside the cave and the wind outside was even fiercier than the day before so we stayed put. With only 1,500 vertical feet to finish the route we were in no hurry to get moving in the bitter cold. At 9:00am, we saw a group of 4 people below us getting ready to start the ice pitch. It turned out to be 2 parties of two (1 RMI guide/1 client in each party). When the guide arrived at our shelter halfway up the ice pitch, he announced us that the weather was supposed to improve later in the day...so we packed our bags and got on the move by 11:00am. The weather did indeed got better as the day progressed and 3 more ice pitches later we were on the Liberty Cap summit (at 5:00pm). Back at the car at 1:30am after descending the Emmons glacier. A video diary of ascent there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QWyMmZZBmM | |
| Posted Jun 1, 2009 2:23 am | ||
| lavaka | Lucked out on weather Date Climbed: May 23, 2009 | |
| We had perfect weather, unlike our previous trips to Washington. Did the route in three days; snow was nasty in the afternoon so we did most of the climbing in the mornings. Benefited greatly from steps kicked by the earlier parties. Found low-angle ice before the bergshrund, a steep but short bergshrund pitch, and low-angle ice to gain the summit ridge. 6 of us. | |
| Posted May 31, 2009 4:00 pm | ||
| FortMental | What Fun! Date Climbed: Jun 17, 1999 | |
| An awesome route when conditions are right! And....conditions are right when you get a little bit of everything....and a lot of ice! | |
| Posted Jan 12, 2009 2:31 pm | ||
| DmitMF | Lucky two on LR Date Climbed: Jun 15, 2008 | |
| Climbed the LR with my partner over 4 days in mid-June. We got very lucky with the weather, snatching the first break after a week or so of climatic unrest. Great climb and it's more difficult than I expected. Bring more screws. | ||
| Posted Jun 24, 2008 3:15 pm | ||
| bluefunk | Fun Climbing Date Climbed: Jun 17, 2007 | |
| Way fun climbing dodging rock and ice fall the whole way. We almost got nailed when the huge serac on the Liberty wall cut lose. Very exciting. | |
| Posted Dec 20, 2007 1:21 pm | ||
| d_shorb | snow conditions made the route what it was Date Climbed: Jun 9, 2003 | |
| Awesome to have a chance to do this one. A classic, with great position, views, and interesting, exposed climbing. the ice was nice and protectable, unlike the snow climbing. | |
| Posted Jun 6, 2007 8:27 pm | ||
| lizrdboy | Perfect weather Date Climbed: Jun 2, 2003 | |
| It's always better to be lucky than good. Three days of perfect weather allowed us to take our time and cruise. Be careful though, and be prepared. Any weather could make things real interesting. | |
| Posted Feb 23, 2007 3:08 am | ||
| Fuggedaboudit | Third time's the charm! Date Climbed: Jun 8, 2006 | |
| Had flown out to try this route two previous years (in April 2005 and May 2004) and after pushing in from Ipsut entrance to Curtis Ridge camp but got weathered off mountain both times without setting foot on Ridge. This year topped out a bit off route on 6/8/06 at 8:30 PM after a very long day with partner Willy Nash. Exhausted and with light fading we camped about 200' below and 200 yards west of Liberty Cap. Lots of snow on the mountain made for slow travel. Day 1 camped at St. Elmo's Pass, day 2 camped on Carbon Glacier below Curtis Ridge, day 3 at Thumb Rock and day 4 on top of what I thought was Liberty Cap but actually turned out to be a subsidiary "cap". Very draining day to get to top, belayed out about 10 pitches in total, and got off route above Black Pyramid. Hardest climbing came ABOVE the Black Pyramid at about 13,500' when we got a bit off-route and veered over too far right (west) and ended up coming up onto a subsidiary "cap" that was about 200' lower and 200 yards west of Liberty Cap. I didnt realize this until a few days later looking at photos. Anyway that unexpected detour spiced things up- it involved a 50' high WI 3 pitch followed by a 100' 70 degree snow pitch. Very different climbing WI3 with 2 ice axes and pack at 13,500' totally exhausted. After that pitch I was psychologically out of gas, I looked at my partner and said "thats it, you have to lead the rest of this or we are bivying right here." Luckily the end of the difficulties was at the top of the steep snow pitch above. Also lost a picket about 3 hours above Thumb in the dark (slid into a crevasse we had belayed). When there was no ice or the ice was crap we had to do sitting body belays in snow backed up by axes (not very reassuring, especially on a single 8mm rope). Encountered no rockfall but there were small avalanches going off on slope immediately to our right as we climbed above Thumb Rock in the dark, one of them sounded quite close. I would suggest you try going around to the left above Thumb if you climb in heavy snow conditions as we did. Thankful for the good weather which held all 5 days. Descended by traversing from Liberty Cap across Winthrop, picked up Emmons route about 11,500'. Met a strong pair of climbers from Texas, Brian and Kelly, you two are gentlemen. | |
| Posted Jun 12, 2006 2:31 pm | ||
| spenceinboulder | Don't Understimate This Climb Date Climbed: May 28, 1991 | |
| Extremely variable conditions including bottomless corn, alpine ice, and breakable crust tested our alpine skills. Summited but it was an epic. | |
| Posted May 8, 2006 11:23 pm | ||
| Erik Beeler | Elated Date Climbed: Apr 9, 2006 | |
| Neoday and Neal rock. Couldn't have done it with out them. | |
| Posted Apr 11, 2006 6:45 pm | ||
| neoday | Seven days and a great view Date Climbed: Apr 9, 2006 | |
| Trip Report to come. | |
| Posted Apr 11, 2006 2:48 pm | ||
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Cascade Volcanoes
