Lexington Tower/East Face

Trip Report

• Route Grade: 5.9+
• Nuber of Pitches: 7-9
• Approach Time: 1:15
• Climbing Time: 6.5 Hours
• Car to Car Time: 10 hours

Seeing that HW20 reopened after the landslide near the Easy Pass fire, Jordon Boss and I headed up to Washington Pass to attempt the East Face of Lexington Tower.

We decided to descend via the gully system so we dropped a car at the Blue Lake trailhead and then parked at the pull off between the hairpin turn and the Washington Pass Overlook. (The approach trail starts to the left of the highway East side barrier.) The trail starts out gaining elevation through the woods but quickly pops out on a scree and boulder slope that heads up towards the towers. Depending on the time of year, this could be covered in snow or completely dry. By the end of August we had very little snow that was easily avoided at the base of the route. It took us an hour and 15 mins to reach the base of the route, including a bit of route finding the best way through the boulder field.

15 mins to gear up and Jordon was off on P0. We decided that to rope up on this pitch because it seemed like the base of the tower was a better spot to situate our gear. It was low 5th class and could probably be scrambled, but it didn't seem like it would take too long to pitch it out. Jordon took P0 to the left side of the treed ledge and brought me up.

P1 has a reputation for being a runout slab (why do those 2 words always go together?) and it lived up to the reputation. I thought the gear was relatively sparse and small through the middle of the pitch, although the climbing was pretty easy, maybe 1 or 2 moves of 5.7. You head up from the belay and then traverse left on some smaller holds before heading up and slightly right once you are out of view of your belayer. There are several options for the next belay, pick one of several ledges with some small trees or bushes depending on how far your rope reaches. Its a rope stretcher with a 60! We brought some smaller gear (00 C3-.1 and some small nuts) for this pitch just in case we could get in some marginal pieces on the runout sections, but we didn't end up using any of it.

In contrast to P1, P2 is nicely protected and we thought it was easier than the 5.8 in Blake Herrington's book. You can see the giant roof/chimney feature you are aiming for on P4 from P2, and you follow the logical corner all the way up through P2 and P3 until you reach a belay in a dead end chimney.

I took the lead again on P3, which was described as a grassy hand crack. OMG this was so vegetated. I spent a little time trying to clean out one of the hand jams, but there is so much dirt and roots in this pitch, it was better to just step on the dirt clumps and grab onto the grass. Once the handcrack ends, you traverse left under the first roof in the above photo and up into the dead end chimney belay. This is an exciting belay with not much underneath you but can be a bit wet if there has been recent rain or early in the season.

A traverse on an airy footrail right off the belay was one of the highlights of this route. It sounded scary with no hand holds but because you are in the chimney, there are opportunities to balance or stem. Around the corner, you cut upwards on a flake with no feet which is the crux of the route. Jordon thought it was a bit awkward to place gear in the few stances he got in this section, but 5.9+ seemed about right.

Finally, we were onto the wide pitches the East Face is famous for! The next 2 pitches have some offwidth and chimney climbing that can be rare in Washington. Mountainproject describes that this next pitch has a 2x4 with a sling jammed in it for protection from an early ascent.  The 2x4 has actually migrated to P6 as of August 2024. Its really just a funny relic though, and looked as if it wouldn't hold even body weight at this point.

The beginning of the offwidth is quite steep but has a lot of good feet on the right. It seemed ideal to have your left side in for this portion, even though the 2 protection bolts were on the left. You can push a #6 above you for most of this portion, although the crack isn't super splitter so be mindful of how you place it when moving upwards. I mainly used a left chicken wing and the available feet to move past the bolts and reach the slung chockstone halfway up this pitch.

The second half of this pitch is an "unprotectable chimney" that goes at 5.8. I have a little bit of chimney climbing experience but its not a type of climbing that is super prevalent in Washington. Getting established in the chimney was the hardest part. Once you were in, (again, left side in) it would have been pretty difficult to fall out. It was the perfect size to get a right knee on one side of the feature and your foot on the other. I think you might have been able to protect this with a new BD #7 or #8 cam, but I didn't measure it to make sure.

The belay after another short section of hand crack is at a 5 inch ledge with some back flaring wide cracks on some grainy rock. I found the gear belay here to be a bit tricky but was able to sling a good chockstone above this ledge and get a few thin hand size pieces in. A second wide section is directly above you.

Time for Jordon's OW pitch. He said he was glad to have the #5 for this short section off the belay as the #6 was too large. Once the crack opens up a bit more the difficulty decreases and you can ramble on up an left over some slabs to a treed belay on the left.

I discovered on this second pitch that as a follower, its very easy to climb on the outside of these wide features. It would feel a bit exposed as the leader since you generally gravitate towards the security of the crack, but as a follower, I was able to avoid some of the offwidth movement.

The remaining terrain can be climbed in 2 long pitches or simuled at low 5th class. There is a bit of an exposed traverse but the ledge is reasonably wide and doesn't feel all that heady. The route actually ends at a notch on the shoulder of Lexington and not the actual summit. You will know you are there because you can see down a gully to into the Liberty Group basin. There was also a Nalgene bottle hanging from a tree that served as a summit register.

As soon as we got to the end of the route our good weather window snapped shut and the clouds opened up. It poured for 20 or 30 minutes as we tried to find the best gully to descend in the damp. There are 3 different gullies heading South West. We scrambled across a thin ridge to the left towards North Early Winters Spire and took the leftmost gully to back to the ground. There was 20 ft or so of exposed easy scrambling that you can mitigate by butt scooting across, then it was a descent though kitty litter and dirt to get back to the trail. It took us about 2 hours to get back to the parking lot, although we weren't really hurrying.

Very glad to have finally ticked this climb off the list. It was a bit more adventurous than some of the other climbing in the Liberty Bell group, but there were some really memorable pitches. I did think that the run outs on P1 were a bit heads up and you would want to be a solid 5.8 climber with a good head game for them. The OW pitches were actually really fun and if you have a bit of technique, not that hard. I would probably bring the #6 again and potentially the #5. The carry over definitely seemed to be the most efficient way to descend over the rappel, especially in late season when you don't need to bring snow gear for the approach. We did not bring packs on this route because of the chimney pitches and I was happy with that decision as well. I think hauling a pack through these pitches would have been a big pain, although maybe a follower could have gotten away with climbing the exterior of the wide cracks.

Gear Notes: For this climb I would take doubles .2-3, Single #5-6, Single 60 meter rope. We had some additional small cams but didn't end up using them. If you are worried about the "unprotected chimney" pitch, you could probably fit a new BD#8 in there to sew it up. We followed Blake Herrington's pitch breakdown as this seemed to make the most sense, but some of the pitch lengths seemed a short. We ran out of rope with a 60 meter on both P1 and P2 .

PC to Jordon Boss and Kelsey Blodgett

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