Northwest Face of Liberty Bell (Larch Madness)

Date

October 3, 2026

Route

Liberty Bell — Northwest Face (5.9)

Group

Me and Sean

You have to know what to do when things go wrong in climbing. So I think it’s good to have things go just a little bit wrong so you can practice for when things go a lotta bit wrong.

Systems are a big part of why I like climbing: protecting a trad pitch well, managing ropes on a wall, finding my way through alpine terrain. It’s about operating well in terrain that makes that difficult.

Sometimes things go really smoothly and you feel like you laced it. A totally pleasant day out, moving smoothly with your partner.

But sometimes you take the harder pitch because the rock looks better. And then the rock isn’t really better. And then you bail, and the rope gets stuck. And then the easier pitch is full of hollow flakes. And you’re tired. And it’s cold, so Sean gets the screaming barfies.

But it’s good to have this experience! It’s practice in figuring it out, and it’s nice to remember I still have all these skills. We even had some fun on this thing!

The Morning

Well, we forgot about Larch Madness.

In our brief planning call of “hey, what do you want to climb?”, neither of us came to the realization that it would be:

Quite cold on a Northwest-facing route in October and
Absolutely overrun by the PNW version of a leaf peeper (Larch Madness)

This made our not-so-early start not exactly the best move for the day (mistake #1?). Thankfully, our trail veered off from the Blue Lake trail and we still found solitude for most of the day. We just had to park pretty far down on the side of the highway and politely ask many a hiker if we could pass on the way. 😇

Morning view down a forested valley with golden larches, gray granite peaks on either side under a clear blue sky — An absolutely beautiful day tho

Sunlit golden larches climbing a slope below a broad gray cliff band

Great day to be part of Larch Madness, realistically.

Climber in a yellow shirt with a teal rope coiled over a pack, hiking up a trail through golden larches toward a granite spire — Sean in his larch camo

Liberty Bell framed between two golden larches against a deep blue sky — Whattup Liberty Bell?

You take the normal approach to the Beckey Route, sticking to the left side of the gully.

View down a rocky gully between granite walls to a valley full of golden larches — Look at all those larches! I get why Blue Lake is a popular hike.

Some 5th class-y moves to get out of the left side of the gully. Steph Abegg has a great beta photo of where this is on Mountain Project.

Climber in a white helmet scrambling up a lichen-covered slab in the gully — Pretty good feet. Felt good in the approach shoes. Sean didn't love his more trail runner style approach shoes for this.

Looking up a steep granite gully with a small climber partway up the talus and slabs — I love being in places like this. Looking up the Beckey Route gully - we'll be coming down that later.

Climber in a helmet standing on a grassy slope at the base of the Northwest Face, larches to the right — A little bit further to the left still

The larches lookin’ good.

Shaded rocky peak across the cirque with scattered golden larches and talus below

Single golden larch against a deep blue sky with distant peaks below

The Climb

The first two pitches were chill and went smoothly. It was a little chilly. We were both climbing in puffies but it was only cold towards the end of the belay.

Teal rope running up a granite crack system toward a small larch, a quickdraw clipped on the right — The first pitch

It was a really, really cool perspective from this side of Liberty Bell. The view was amazing. We had a great view of Golden Horn and Tower Mountain which we’d scrambled on an overnight in fall 2024.

They’re such dramatically shaped mountains. So cool.

Panorama from the face of jagged granite peaks and forested ridges stretching to the horizon — Hardy, Golden Horn, and Tower

The shadow of the peak cast across the forest and talus far below, with the highway curving through the valley — Mountain shadow. Count it.

After the top of the second pitch, you move your belay over 100ft and establish at the base of two different options. You can either take the original 5.8+ pitch on some very hollow-looking flakes or you can take a better-looking pitch that starts with a 5.7 crack, steepens, then hits a .10d groove-to-slab section protected by two bolts.

Well, I thought I would just give the .10d a go because the first bit looked like better rock quality and “hey it’s bolted, why not”.

There turned out to be plenty of crumbly rock on this pitch too, including a big flake when you get into the steep bit that flexed when I hand jammed behind it. I promptly stopped jamming. And the first bolt looked a long way off given how steep the groove was 😅

I also thought that if I were to fall, it seemed likely that my feet would be landing pretty close to that flake that flexed.

I wanted to push myself to try this but I felt like there were enough reasons to back down:

Fall potential was bigger than I’d hoped
Falling would have landed me near some sketchy rock with my partner only slightly off to the side
It was cold and we were in a position that would have been less than ideal to self-rescue from if I got hurt falling

Margins are smaller in alpine climbing. I like making safe decisions to climb (or ski or bike) another day.

It’s unfortunate when those safe decisions result in your rope getting stuck though 😂

Mistake #2 was taking this pitch. But mistake #0, which we didn’t figure out until the raps, was taping the ends of my rope. I’d cut this rope from a longer rope and taped the ends. When I pulled it through two vertically offset cams, the taped end got caught in the lobes of the lower cam. Even with both of us yarding on it, we couldn’t pull this thing.

So I had to re-climb the pitch, extend my upper piece, and lower off again, leaving two cams behind. Thankfully, the rope pulled without issue this time.

The 5.8+ pitch felt scary because I was already a little bit psyched out, but realistically, the gear wasn’t horrible. The climbing was actually OK but I was pretty over it so I didn’t enjoy the pitch very much.

Sean can’t lead right now because he’s coming back from knee surgery #2. So while I’m faffing around, Sean’s just getting colder.

Looking down the rope at climbers on the lower face, golden larches and the highway valley far below — Sean, getting the screaming barfies

Once he was finally able to climb after basically belaying me three times, his fingers and toes weren’t having it. He had to stop mid-pitch and let them warm up and he got the screaming barfies! 😱 What, are we ice climbing?!

The pitch 3 belay was pretty directly above the gear I bailed off of so I fixed a line and rapped down on a gri gri to snag my gear. Sean had a nano traxion with him which made the jug back up much nicer than using my hollow block.

I had been bringing a tibloc with me on multi pitch climbs for a while but I stopped including it in my usual kit for some reason. And I always question whether I actually want to bring my gri gri on alpine climbs too, due to the weight. But I was happy to have both in this scenario and that might put any doubts I had about the gri gri to rest. And I just might start bringing a micro traxion most of the time too. They’re both pretty nice to have.

Teal rope disappearing down a granite chimney, with forested valleys and jagged peaks beyond

The “money pitch” was actually quite fun. Good movement. I was still just not fully in it but got into a pretty good flow and enjoyed the interesting corner climbing the further along I got in the pitch.

The top was a little tricky to protect, as the MP description warns. But not too tricky and I got some great nut placements before it eased up.

Sean was psyched to find the sunshine.

Climber following a crack, shielding their eyes from the sun, with talus and golden larches far below — Warming up the fingys

Climber in a white helmet smiling up from a granite crack, golden larches and talus far below — Basking

Hot tip: the Mountain Project pitch description says go left on low to mid 5th class terrain from the 4th pitch belay. Do not do this.

Do like one 5th class move to the right and get on some 3rd class terrain and unrope shortly thereafter 😅

Sean led out left from the 4th pitch belay, thinking it would be chill and it was sunny and he was cold so I thought that would be great. I didn’t think to check the topo to compare against the MP description 🤦‍♂️

Regrettably, this led to Sean having to downclimb back to the anchor due to some unprotected hard moves blocking the exit that way. This is exactly the situation his doctor told him not to get into so we’re counting this as mistake #3.

The Summit & Descent

We finally sorted out the right way, unroped, and had a chill scramble over to the true summit. We were happy this was easy to sort out.

Evening view from high on the mountain down a long valley filling with shadow, jagged ridgeline on the right — Looking into WaPass proper from the col between the false summit and true summit of Liberty Bell.

It was an absolutely beautiful day and we were psyched to be in the sunshine.

Don’t climb a NW-facing route in October. 😇

Granite spire glowing in golden-hour light, framed by dark pine branches

Climber rappelling over the edge of a tan granite slab, rope running down toward the camera

We almost had mistake #4 on the raps when our rope got stuck on our second pull. “No f*cking way.”

Thankfully, this came unstuck with minimal rope flinging and we came to the realization that the tape on the ends of the rope was the problem.

I thought the rope getting stuck the first time was a weird fluke. Now, not so much.

More laughing at our faffing and we landed back in the gully, with a short walk back down to our bags.

Descent gully lit orange at sunset between towering rock walls, a small climber partway down and larch-covered valley beyond — The light!

Sure, we didn’t expect to be getting down at sunset but dang, golden hour was pretty.

And we ran into some goat buddies!

Climber with a white pack among golden larches and red huckleberry at dusk

Close-up of golden larch needles on gray branches

More larch stoke on the hike down. It’s always longer on the way out. But the light was incredible.

Large old larch with burnt-orange needles growing from a boulder field below a cliff — I didn't know larches got this big! Whoa!

It was an excellent day despite the shenanigans. You gotta have some days like this to make you appreciate the days that go smoothly 😁

Wrap Up

It’s good to know what to do when things go wrong and practice systems that let you do that. But even more important is being calm and able to work through problems efficiently with your climbing partner and not let it ruin your day. And I think we nailed that even though we did get totally throttled on this route 😂

Mountain ridgelines silhouetted against a yellow sunset glow

I was worked that evening but was stoked to meet up with Healey and Rama for a van camp on Goat Creek road with an insane view of the Milky Way. We got a great bike ride in on Wild Turkey on Sun Mountain (wow that trail was fun!).

And then I moseyed my way home, stopping so many times in the pass to enjoy the views with tired legs and very little desire to walk too far 😂

It’s fun to see the larches from the road too.

Highway curving past evergreens toward mountains with larch-covered slopes

Jagged granite peaks above a band of golden larches and dense evergreen forest

White camper van parked at a gravel highway pullout below larch-covered mountains

Rocky summit with a patch of golden larches below it and granite slabs on the forested slope

I also did some ski line spotting. Man I gotta get out here right when the road opens next year.