A reasonably short (5 mile round trip, 2,561 ft gain) ski+tiny rock climb objective! With nearly 2,000 ft of open slope downhill skiing! You do have to put your skins back on to travel the remaining 1 mile back to the trailhead
Climb
[Credit to SummitPost] Described below are a few options one has to climb the summit block. They are all fun climbs and each offers a unique challenge. Choose your route based on the comfort level of your group and by the gear you brought on the climb. Each route is 40-50 feet long so a 30 meter rope is enough to both climb any of these routes and make the 50 foot rappel back down. A small rack of cams from 0.3″-1″ and a set of stoppers will be plenty for each of these routes. Once everyone in your group reaches the gnarled tree belay, it’s a 10 second walk to the summit. Don’t forget to peer down the north face while you’re up there and admire the fantastic view of Mount Rainier.Routes on the Unicorn Summit Pinnacle (‘XX’ are anchors)
Route
Photo
Name
Rating
Brief Description
1
The Roof
Class 5.6
Start at the base of the summit pinnacle where it meets the saddle on the South side and climb a finger crack 5 feet to a chimney. Climb into the chimney and up a couple feet until you reach the roof. Then climb to the right out onto a slab and around the right side of a bulge. Walk up to the belay station at the gnarled tree with many slings around it.
2
Classic Route
Class 5.6
Start 20 feet to the right of The Roof and climb easy cracks and ledges up and leftward. Continue climbing diagonally to the gnarled tree and belay.
3
Open Book Cracks
Class 5.0
From the base of The Roof, walk down and East about 30 yards to a shallow gully composed of a couple left leaning cracks. Climb up a couple of moves and scramble to a large ledge. From here, you can see back down the easy walk up variation. Above you will be two parallel cracks leading the rest of the way up. I recommend the crack on the left as the right crack has a slightly overhanging start. Continue up the crack to the top and walk over to the gnarled tree belay station.
4
East Side Walk Up Route
Class 4
Walk past the start of route #3 toward a gendarme east of the summit pinnacle to a dead tree at the base of the summit pinnacle. From the tree, you can walk up a gravelly runnel to a platform below the parallel cracks on the upper section of route 3 (Class 3). From here, either climb the left crack as per route 3 above (Class 5.0) or traverse further right towards the widly exposed north face and continue up an exposed 4th class chimney to the summit.
Rappel
15 meter rappel down the south side (30m single rope sufficient)
This was actually really fun! Skiing down was GREAT, snow was reasonably sun-softened, not too big of sun cups Views were AMAZING Skinning up was decent, had to boot up the two steep sections of ascent Getting from top of the snow bowl to base of the rock climb was a bit challenging, that took…
