| "Jungle Love" - SW Rib variation Trip Report |
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| "Jungle Love" - SW Rib variation   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Washington, United States, North America Lat/Lon: 48.51220°N / 120.6208°W Date Climbed/Hiked: Aug 27, 2003 | Page By: sprosseda Created/Edited: Sep 9, 2003 / Object ID: 168897 Hits: 564 Loading... Page Score: 0% - 0 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
My partner and I left our car at 9am for South Early Winter Spire. I have already done the South Arete and was looking for the next more challenging route up. We went up the Southwest Couloir to climb the Southwest Rib but didn't want to climb the 80' 5.8 pitch. We checked out the alternate entry to the 5.5 2nd pitch and didn't like the exposed ledge to cross. From inside the Southwest Couloir I found a line that would take us to the top of the dolphin feature. We went up into the left branch of the couloir to start. The 1st pitch climbs up the left wall into an obvious 6 ft. high cave, then leftward with a reverse mantel downclimb move into a slight "v" shaped depression. Then continue up the depression around some loose blocks to a ledge and a nice tree. The first pitch was mid 5th class. The 2nd pitch goes left from the tree to a large chimney. There is an exposed ~5.8 stretch move across a column to get into the chimney, then take the chimney easily to its top with some loose blocks. Now we were on top of the dolphin! This variation bypassed the first 4 pitches of the SW Rib. We then followed the standard upper 3 pitches to the summit. The first pitch from the dolphin was fun with the slabs, knife-edged "clean crest" portion (5.5) and exposure to the sides. I stretched this pitch out to be 150 ft. long. The next pitch was short and level but had some downclimbing off the crest to get into the upper left couloir. The final pitch to the summit was some flakes, then a short clean wall with a 4" crack going the whole length (~25 ft.). We did 5 pitches in all, then downclimbed the entire SW Couloir. The rock is most solid in the steepest portion of the couloir so only one rappel was made down the large chockstone at the bottom. We were on the summit at 7pm, bottom of the couloir rappelling at 9pm and at our car at 11.30 pm. This was an awesome day (and chilly).
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