Liberty Crack - The 24th Classic

The 24th Classic

Story by Scott Presho

East side of the Liberty Bell Massif
Photo by Scott Presho

It was the sound of a tight swarm of angry hummingbirds zipping past me somewhere to my right. The distant, yet sickening thud of stone hitting snow came next. Rob glibly volunteered it's proximity to me as "under fifteen feet" from the safety of the overhang. Judging from the breath of the stones vibration on my face I guessed it was more like fifteen inches. The words "massive head injuries" sprang to mind, so I frantically finished cleaning the pitch up to the shoe-box sized stance, and haven, under the Lithuanian Roof.

I was completely freaked out. Rob calmly began racking for my lead as I ducked and flinched at the sound of flies buzzing around the belay. The last thing I wanted to do at that moment was stick my head over the lip of that roof into a field of fire that was surely going to center punch my forehead. Rob seemed unconcerned so, with a presage of doom hanging like a pall around my shoulders, I clipped into the belay and started up.

Crouching in my aiders under the roof, I quickly peaked out over the lip to see that I was hanging from a fixed knifeblade hammered to the hilt. Gaining a modicum of psychological security from this sight I heaved myself into a standing position and into the line of fire. The second placement above the pin was a brass nut that rocked like the pivot of a pendulum each time I stood up to get a look at what lay ahead. A beautiful placement of an ugly little wired nut aptly stamped with the moniker "Troll" got my knees above the roof, and a chance to cower and ponder imaginary whirring and buzzing noises. A plethora of beaten fixed nuts, half driven, rusty 1/4 inch bolts, and wildly pounded pins were interspersed with small, marginal nut placements. Finishing with a difficult traversing move out of my aiders to a mantle, I stood at the top of the second pitch of the Liberty Crack.

"Uncle Bob!", I shouted at the sight of Rob's black hat coming out from underneath the roof. Cllipping the pro to bypass the roof, he was strangely silent as he cleaned my lead. Even my news of much fixed gear above failed to invoke the usual, sublime epithet that characterizes Rob's climbing patois. The look in his eyes as he neared the stance explained it all: It was his turn to be gripped. "You want this pitch?", he asked in a voice that fit his face. "No", I emphatically replied just a bit too forcefully. "I'm gripped", he pleaded. "Look, there's eight pieces fixed. The hard part's real short. It's your lead. Do it." We racked gear, drank water, reviewed the pair of crumpled, ambiguous topos we had brought along for moral support and argued ridiculously about nothing in general. Rob refused a granola bar, citing "lower intestinal anxiety" and moved off the belay.

Standing on a what he described as a fixed "full-view copperhead with a horsehair-sized cable that's frayed", Rob stated flatly, "If there's anything worse than this, I'm coming down.". Fortunately there wasn't. An old mashie, a hook move, a good nut, and a strangely fixed, barely discernable hex got him past the A3. A more jovial Rob quickly finished the pitch up to the third stance. An hour-and-a-half, two rappels, and a great glissade later, we were making pesto linguine and guzzling cold beers. While pointedly ignoring the ominous cloud cover and engaging in a spirited mosquito killing contest, we occasionally gazed at the pitches above our high point through the binoculars. We later crawled into our bags totally stoked, and I drifted off to sleep imagining each of the pitches we would be doing the next day.

I was awakened about 3 a.m. by raindrops hitting me in the face. I burrowed deeper into my bivi sack and tried to will away the inevitable by going back to sleep. Driven from our bags by the incessant patter of the rain at dawn, we drank coffee and discussed our sparse options until about ten before we gave up the vigil and left, leaving the ropes and gear behind. The thought of jugging through the sheets of water that would most certainly be pouring from the lip of the roof was enough impetus for that decision. The idea of rain-induced rockfall came later and was sufficient rationalization to waylay some of the pain of what looked to be the certain loss of all of our fixed gear. Stopping to get some coffee in Marblemount, we were not amused at the picture postcards of a sun-drenched Liberty Bell massif at the front counter. We bought a couple of them anyway, and cursed the Northwest weather soundly as we drove out of town, postcards defiantly in hand. It was a dismal, gray drive home that morning, punctuated by the ironic mockery of bright sunshine as we drove into Seattle, and brightened only slightly by Rob's visionary idea that we kidnap all of the local T.V. weather personalities and place them in a torture chamber designed to rain 24 hours a day.

July 4th, 3:45 a.m.. I am simultaneously awakened by my clock radio, my dog barking furiously, and Rob hammering on my bedroom window. Time, according to Rob, is of the essence.

The drive into the predawn hours of the North Cascades National Park is filled with a steady stream of thinly veiled doubts and anxieties about the weather and our gear still being in place and intact. My attempts at completely waking fail, so I amuse myself by listening to Rob's usual monotribe though a sleepy haze. His uncharacteristically fast, erratic driving gets us to our parking spot of three days previous in Rob's allotted three hours.

Peeking through a cloud of mosquitoes trying to feast on my tired blood, I turn at Rob's comment to see two guys walking out of the woods. They are Brits who bivied below the face. They don't like the looks of the weather, they say, so are moving on to Mt. Slesse or the Bugaboos. As a friend later stated, they made the mistake of biviing below such a large face, and coming from a land not noted for it's Grade V alpine rock climbs, probably came down with a bad case of scale-induced lassitude. We consider it our good fortune that two fixed ropes did not impair their intrepidations, as the sky is showing blue and we are to be the only ones on the Liberty Crack today.

We reach the base of the wall at Rob's allotted time of 8 a.m.. I immediately drop our food into the bergshrund. I desperately worm my way down into the deep-freeze setting in an attempt to rescue the grub. With my body jammed head-down, I am just able to tickle the food bag with the tips of my fingers. It responds by coyly dropping out of sight. Needless to say, it is not retrievable. Rob, obviously trying to handicap himself on the 4th class section leading to the bottom of the fixed ropes, attempts the moves with a wad of jumar and aider in each fist. Result: One jumar and one aider in the bergshrund. He repeats the ice worm impersonation, and to our good fortune, it is retrievable. Without further incident, we're soon jugging to our high point.

I go first and as I pass through the crux section on the third pitch, an irresistible urge strikes me. I lift ever so slightly on the "full-view copperhead" and much to my surprise it pops out of it's niche with a force usually reserved for flicking a light switch. "Oops" I say out loud as I search in vain for the sight of the copperhead placement. I pocket it and continue to the top of the fixed lines. As Rob nears the anchors, I ask, "Notice anything different about that pitch?". He looks down, "No". "That copperhead's gone". "No it's not", he insists. I casually persuade him that, yes, indeed, that copperhead is gone. He surmises that it was probably washed away by the rain. I counter with the theory that maybe the wind was the culprit. He shrugs, mutters something unintelligible, and continues up to where I'm standing in the sun.

The first pitch of the day is pretty straightforward except for the sporadic layer of rain washed fecal matter and toilet paper perched on a small, crucial shelf just below the belay. A difficult variation gets me past this 'objective' danger, and Rob is soon moving. He reaches the last move before the belay. "Watch out for those turds". "Where?""Six inches in front of your nose". "Oh GAWD!", he fairly shrieks. He doesn't see my variation so he precariously makes the testy feces move using thin nubbins protruding through the patina of shit on the shelf.

The next pitch is a long, wide corner crack. Following it under the weight of the pack it seems like a series of squat thrusts interspersed with a good fist jam every other one. The belay is reached under the added weight of Rob's meandering conjecture about the next pitch. I look up to see what appears to be a casual romp up a relatively low-angle corner. Rob remembers reading somewhere about loose blocks and pleads with me to tread lightly, as he is trussed into the belay standing chest high and helpless in the fall line.

Several moves into the bass-sounding, decomposing blocks, I look down to see Rob's face looking quite similar to my dog's when she happens to leave malodorous things where she shouldn't. I lieback a flake that makes an ominous grating noise as I pull on it, make four aid moves past a VW sized block the consistency of blown acoustical ceiling, and plop down on a sitting belay complete with a nasty ridge that digs deeply into the backs of my legs. Before I can even begin clipping the bolts, I hear a distant, "That's me!"

Anxious to be away from me, the bad rock below, or maybe the smell of fear that still lingers around him, Rob quickly aids through some leaning squeeze thing and out of sight. After several silent moments and telltale jerks on the rope, I hear a very subdued, "Off belay, Scott". As I reach the belay, an agitated Rob fairly yells, "Would you look at those bolts?!". We come to a rare agreement that in our 30 odd years of collective climbing experience, those are, without a doubt, the two saddest looking, mankiest belay bolts we have ever seen. Coupled with our exposed position directly above the black hole that is the Concord Tower/Liberty Bell coulior and the ensuing, wildly exposed damp hand traverse leading off the belay, our situation causes Rob to literally bark, "Get going!!". "Rob, I'm just hanging here. Relax". "I don't like these bolts!", he shouts. "Neither do I", I reply in my best soothing, kindly-psychiatrist voice. His nervous fidgeting and mumbling speeds me off the manky belay and past an equally manky fixed pin. The soggy nature of the hand traverse is such that I shamelessly aid the first placement, grab a long-dead tree, and scoot up easier ground, clipping into a virtual museum of antique fixed hardware as I go. Rob gets to the belay out of breath and very relieved to be away from the bolts of doom.

The exposure of the lower pitches is replaced by the relaxed atmosphere of the tree-dotted ramp system above. As I follow the next pitch, the pack fits into the musty chimney with a tolerance that would make any Incan stone mason really proud. In fact, it fits so well that with every piece of pro I remove, I cut loose with my hands and feet and hang from it to rest and rack the gear. The next three pitches that Mr. Beckey describes as "not noteworthy" end up being some of the most enjoyable on the route, and are quickly disposed.

At a little after 3 p.m. we're standing on the class 2 ledges leading to the rappel anchors above the notch. We quickly scramble to the summit to behold a beautiful, clear view across both sides of the North Cascades. Cheesy summit photos, a quick down climb, stuck ropes on both rappels, and we are at last making our way down the rubble-strewn gully leading to the snow and, finally, the trail. We reach the road via the circuitous trail at Rob's allotted 6 p.m.. By 7 p.m. we are at the car drinking a celebratory warm beer and gazing with tired contentment at what Roper and Steck appropriately designated a classic; the Liberty Crack route on Liberty Bell Mountain.

As of this writing, Rob still doesn't know the true reason for the disappearance of his nemesis A3 copperhead. I almost showed it to him on the walk up the road to the car, but I didn't. He'll figure it out when he receives an envelope in the mail with nothing in it but a "full-view copperhead with a horsehair-size cable that's frayed.".

I also want to apologize to those that passed through the A3 section after we did. I really didn't intend to clean that copperhead. Really I didn't.