| Serpentine Arete (5.8), Dragontail (North Cascades) Trip Report |
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| Serpentine Arete (5.8), Dragontail (North Cascades)   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Washington, United States, North America Date Climbed/Hiked: Jun 8, 2009 Activities: Hiking, Mountaineering, Trad Climbing Season: Spring, Summer | Page By: StephAbegg Created/Edited: Jun 7, 2009 / Nov 20, 2009 Object ID: 519244 Hits: 833 Loading... Page Score: 85.92% - 1 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
More on my websiteThis trip report is copied from my website, which has several other climbing trip reports and photographs from the North Cascades and elsewhere: http://sites.google.com/site/stephabegg/home. Studying for final exams.... The Route (Click on images to enlarge) |  |  |
It was the weekend before spring quarter final exams at UW. I study better under a time crunch, so my friend Sara and I headed up to climb Serpentine Arete (5.8) on Dragontail. We climbed the route in a day from the car. We left the Stuart Lake trailhead at 4:30am, got to Colchuck Lake by 6:30am, were climbing the rock by 8:30am, summited at 2pm, made it back to the lake at 4:45pm, were back to the car by 6:45pm, and were back to Seattle by 10pm. Time to study! We simulclimbed most of the route, and had a blast. Here are some photos and brief descriptions for this trip report.
| | Illustrated Trip Report (Click on images to enlarge) |  | Looking up the route from the base. We started just right of the orange slabs at the top of the terminal morraine above Colchuck Lake. |  | The first pitch, short 5.7ish pitch to get to class 3 ramps. |  | Easy scrambling for much of the route. |  | Sara leading the first of the 2 "crux" pitches mid-route, a 5.8 crack. These were our 2 favorite pitches, we wished there could be more of this kind of climbing! |  | Sara following the second of the 2 "crux" pitches mid-route, a 5.8 dihedral. These were our 2 favorite pitches, we wished there could be more of this kind of climbing! |  | Most of the second half of the climb involved fun 3rd to mid-5th class climbing up the arete. There were several possible variations. |  | We spotted a Mountaineer party heading up to Colchuck Col. I decided to make the route look more impressive by rotating the photo.... |  | A piton, perhaps from the original ascent of Serpentine Arete in 1973. |  | The view of Colchuck Col from our climb. |  | The view south from the summit. |  | The view of Colchuck (and Stuart behind) from the summit. |  | Early summer snow in the Upper Enchantment Lake Basin on the descent down the back of Dragontail and down Aasgard Pass (a walk-off, although Aasgard Pass never fails to be uncomfortable on the knees). |  | The last of the winter ice on Colchuck Lake. |  | I can never resist taking photos of chipmunks. | Images
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Enchantments
