Start date 20230625
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On Sunday, we were planning on attempting the Liberty Traverse, and successfully climbed the Northwest Face of Liberty Bell, but then Concord was dripping wet, and with the 55% chance of rain at 2pm, we decided to bail after getting to the base of Concord (and that was the right call, it started raining at noon and POURED!).

Gear brought

  • #0.3-3 with double 0.3-0.75, nuts (including our one offset nut), 10 slings (9 single alpine, 1 double alpine).
    • This was just perfect for me. If anything could maybe skip bringing the #3, but that’s it.
  • Single 60m rope
  • Radios – They were nice to have, a number of belays end out of sight and comms would be difficult.

Impressions

  • Better than expected! Although P3 was tougher than expected, I didn’t like the crux move on it
  • P1 ⭐⭐, actually had a few features, nice belay ledge
  • P2 ⭐⭐, again some decent features, the rock horn was actually ok coming down over
  • Scramble to P3 ⭐⭐ Easy, no need to stay roped up, class 2 terrain
  • P3 ⭐ The flakes were fun, but then they disappear halfway up and there’s a move with less-featured holds that felt difficult, I struggled there but got it clean.
  • P4 ⭐⭐ Good! Still wouldn’t call it 3 stars but I enjoyed it, there was one neat move in the middle. Protected decently too.
  • P5 ⭐⭐ Ok, just easy terrain staying left to summit
  • Scramble down to notch ⭐⭐ Straightforward 15 feet down
  • 5th class scramble to true summit ⭐⭐ Straightforward
  • Rappels: ⭐⭐⭐ Pretty good! See rappel info below, took us some time to find the R2 anchor.
  • Most of the pitches were ~45m, kinda long!
  • If ditching gear for the traverse at the base of the 5th class step on the approach, it’ll be probably a 10 min round trip walk to grab that gear after rappelling (it’s a short distance but a somewhat annoying gully there).
  • A number of the pitches had a few slight wet sections, but it wasn’t impactful. I’d guess after a good rain storm it’ll stay wet the next day (the day before they got probably half an inch of rain).

Timeline

  • 3:00 AM – Hiking
  • 4:55 AM – Base (1:55hr approach)
  • 5:05 AM – Climbing
  • 8:25 AM – Top of actual summit (3:20 hr climbing)
  • 8:35 AM – Rappelling
  • 9:10 AM – Base (~35 min rappelling)

Approach

The 5th class step to access the ridge was a little worse than I hoped, I didn’t enjoy it. I set up the rope for Alexis. Otherwise the approach was good. There was a 10 ft section of snow on the approach after the 5th class step, but we were able to find a lower angle slope on it and kick in steps across.

Rappels

R1 – 30m. From the tree (20m below true summit), rappel off of slings from the tree the full 30m rope length to a big ledge.

Hike down and skiers right for just 15 seconds, spot the huge white cliff on the skiers right, traverse over to its bolted chain anchor (can be a bit difficult to spot, people’s trails going down go every direction).

R2 – ~25m. Rappel basically straight down from the anchor pictured above.

R3 – ~28m. Rappel basically straight down to the ground! The notch looks far away, but a ramp connects higher up to the ground and the rope easily makes it!