The Far Side Crags
- Gear Used:
- 60 meter rope
- quickdraws
July 24, 2007
The Approach
After a horrible 6 hour drive and a crappy hike in the rain, Tuesday brought sun and a beautiful 69° temp. I called Travis with hopes of a short day on the tooth at snoqualmie pass. His phone died and I couldn't get a hold of him. I started to stress out thinking that another day would be wasted. I started contemplating suicide, I mean soloing the tooth. I eventually got a hold of Adam and he was ready for day of cragging at Exit 38.
45 minutes later we hiking through the beautiful forest. It's about a 15-20 minute hike to get to the Far Side area but it is all easy hiking. It's a great view when you can finally see the slab of Endless Bliss. It is a pretty striking route.
The Climbs
Endless Bliss, 5.9
Endless Bliss is an swesome slab that climbs for about 130 feet. It has some great moves and a the rock texture is like velcro. You feel like your about to slip and scrape your face off as you tumble down the slab but your feet just stick to it. There are a ton of bolts on this climb and it is set up so you can lead it with a 60 meter rope and descend with 2 rapells. The top of the climb was my favorite part as a finger crack traverse appears right before the anchor. It's to bad that the creck is only a couple of moves long.
Adam clinging to the awesome velcro slab.
Watch yourself biatch!
Cant Remember, 5.10a
Next we jumped on a great 5.10a. It's fun and steep with some cool moves. You can do a second pitch up the slab (5.9) but we rapped down from the first pitch. The slab above looks great though. Adam lead up first and we then pulled the rope so I could lead it.
Adam leading the 5.10a.
We packed up with the idea of heading to the Gritstone for a couple of the cool hard routes on the rock. Unfortunatly, some dicks decided to take up both the anchors on the rock so nobody else could climb them. I heard the girl asking the dick if they should take down the anchor so those waiting below could climb and he said "we were here first". Please don't be dick in the mountains. The city is where the dicks should be.