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This route doesn’t actually go to the top of Morning Star, but is a little north on its ridge.

Resources

• Steph Abegg
• Mountain Project

Gear

• 60m rope
• 11 quickdraws if you clip every bolt
  • 3 single alpines good enough

Approach

Take the Sunrise Mine Trail to the final switchback before it goes up the steep series of switchbacks.

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Near the base, spot the red gully, and make one quick class 4 move up it, and then a short easy class 3 scramble towards the left leads you to the base.

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Spot out the lone pine tree and go to it… P1 starts just 10 yards beyond it.

Climb

We found Mile High Club to be fun, exposed, and sustained at the 5.9-5.10a grade. The rock is a metamorphosed sandstone which is generally solid, has good friction, and is littered with positive holds. The route is well-bolted and never felt dangerously runnout, although it is ledgy enough that you don’t want to fall. It was a enjoyable afternoon of “alpine cragging” in the North Cascades

Steph Abegg

Route overlay (from original trip report)

Pitch 1 – 5.10a, 100′

Some juggy and powerful moves at the start, and then more crimpy climbing on the arete. Easiest climbing seems to be just to the right of the arete. One bolt is on the far left of the arete, which oddly makes you climb left to then climb back right.

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Pitch 2 – 5.9, 70′

Short pitch with one crux move at the third bolt. Either go straight over the bolt, or off around to the right. Belay at either of the two anchors before walking to the base of P3.

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Pitch 3 – 5.9, 150′

I believe this one possibly had a slightly odd start, but then it goes up some easier terrain and around some bushy sections. I’d recommend leaving your belay at the start of P2, as there’s no great bolt anchor at the base of the cliff of P3.

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Pitch 4 – 5.10a, 100′

Make sure to stay a bit right on the start… don’t go up the leftmost corner as the bolts are more to the right!

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Pitch 5 – 5.10a 80′

The difficult corner! Some crimpy moves and some power moves. The final move across to the anchor is a bit awkward and tricky too.

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Pitch 6 – 5.10a, 115′

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Pitch 7 – 5.8, 100′

A tricky move off the start finishes with nice easier climbing to the summit!

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Summit

It’s actually pretty big! Great views and plenty of space for a couple groups!

Descent

Rap the route. A 60 is sufficient since there’s an intermediate station for rapping P3. Don’t bother trying to skip raps if you have doubles, too risky for getting the rope caught! Even with a single rope, we got our rope caught twice.

Rap 1 – 100′, rap P7 off the summit a full 100 feet to the lower of the two anchors.

Rap 2 – 95′, rap P6, toss your rope slightly skiiers left of bolt line to avoid hitting climbers. End at the climbing anchor that’s 5 feet climbers right and 5 feet above the anchor for the dihedral pitch (this sets you up to avoid rapping in the dihedral).

Rap 3 – ~70′, rap P5 (skiiers left of it), ending at the climbers right anchor at the base of P5.

Rap 4 – 100′, rap P4, end at either of the two anchors.

Rap 5 – ~85′, rap upper half of P3, staying on the arete (mostly walking), and look for an anchor on the climbers right side of the arete at around 85 feet (there’s about a 7 ft tall “tree”/bush just right of the anchor too). This ends before the rappel starts to go vertical.

Rap 6 – ~70′, rap lower half of P3 to either of the two anchors visible below.

Rap 7 – ~70′, rap P2

Rap 8 – ~90′, rap P1 straight down to the skinny ledge, walk off!

Avoid a pendulum on the Pitch 7 rap by lowering down to the large flake before walking left to the belay. Use the pitch 3 intermediate anchor (or you will have to pull the rope and make an unprotected scramble, clip the P2 anchor at your feet. You can’t skip that intermediate station with a 70, doing this is NOT recommended). 
The starting ledge is several hundred feet above the ground and rather exposed. Climbers might want to traverse back to the starting bolt before unroping. It’s possible to pull the rope on the final rappel from that position. 

Note that as you will rap the route this can jam up on weekends. If you arrive early be prepared to deal with other parties on your rap. If you arrive late maybe bring a rack and just go get on one of the fun routes at Vesper. 

Mountain Project

Pretty much every belay station has 2 sets of anchors a few feet apart, so a descending party won’t be sharing the same anchor with an ascending party. All the anchors are those fixe chains with a rappel ring directly welded onto the bolt hanger, so there were a few times where I thought the rope might be stuck, but it probably just got snagged between the rappel ring and the hangar. Pulling the other strand of the rope (and grunting a lot) usually fixed the problem.

Finding the mid-station P3 rap was a bit tricky. It’s just to the left of a big clump of tree/bushes.

Before you descend too far from the summit, look for the approach trail that cuts through some brush. It’s pretty obvious from high on the route, but once you get lower, it can be tricky to find and you might end up doing more bushwhacking than you need to. This’ll have the double-negative effect of creating yet another social trail (like we did *sheepish look*), and no one wants an eroded, hard-to-follow approach/descent trail.

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