Climbing the Beckey Route on Liberty Bell Mountain, Mazama, Washington
After climbing the South Arete on South Early Winters Spire and Flyboys on the Goat Wall over the previous two days, we were ready to round out the rock climbing portion of the trip with another alpine rock adventure up the Beckey Route on Liberty Bell in Mazama, WA.
We once again parked at the Blue Lake Trailhead and hiked 2.25 miles and gained 1500 ft of elevation to get to the base of the route where we’d put our harnesses on. Our guide, Tino, started leading the way. After climbing Flyboys the day before, the climbing on this day felt much easier. It felt like the climbing topped out at 5.8, or at least what felt like a 5.8 around where I’m from in Colorado. I’m glad we had Tino to lead the way this day as the route was not obvious to me. At one point, Tino even had to tell the group in front of us that they were climbing the wrong way and that the route went a different direction. After several pitches, we found ourselves near the top which involved some class 3/4 scrambling for the last several hundred feet. While the view from the top was very similar to the view from the top of South Early Winters Spire just a few days before, we had much better visibility on this day and really were able to enjoy the views around us. After a short break, we started our descent. Initially, it followed the way we came up, but then we hiked over to some rappel anchors, and we were able to head down the remainder of the route with two rappels - probably Mike’s favorite part of the day. We then hiked back down the steep gully that led back to the hiking trail and headed back to the car. Overall, I really enjoyed this route and thought it was a good route to end our rock climbing portion of the trip on. Next, we had our sights set on Mount Shuksan.
Total Stats: 5.6 miles, 2300 ft of elevation gain.
