Climbing the South Arete of South Early Winters Spire, Mazama, Washington
Mike and I were looking to get some alpine rock climbing exposure so we hired a guide we met up in Alaska earlier this year, Tino Villanueva, and had him take us out for several days of rock climbing in the Mazama, WA area. Our first objective was going to be the South Arete of South Early Winters Spire, an alpine route that tops out at 5.5 difficulty.
We parked at the Blue Lake Trailhead and began hiking up to the bottom of the climbing route. The hiking portion was about 2.5 miles with about 1900 ft of elevation gain. Once we got to the bottom of the route, we put on our harnesses and roped up. Tino led the first pitch, which ended up being the hardest pitch in my opinion. The rest of the route involved some class 3, class 4, and low class 5 climbing. One part involved traversing a rock that dropped off on both sides that I found was pretty fun to cross. It looked like it was going to rain most of the day and at one point it did start lightly raining for about 10 minutes. Had it kept raining and the rock gotten any wetter, we probably would have turned around. The weather held out for us though, and we ended up making it to the top. After a snack break, we headed back down the way we came up. This was a really fun route to get our first exposure to some alpine rock climbing. We’d be coming back to the same area in two days to try a route up Liberty Bell.
Total Stats: 5.5 miles, 2350 ft of elevation gain
