After a delightfully lazy week on the beach at Lake Chelan, Larissa and I decided to cap off our relaxing trip with a visit to Washington Pass. After considering some of the area classics, we got excited about doing something more obscure. Finally, we settled on the Northwest Face of Kangaroo Temple, a rarely traveled route up a neglected Washington Pass spire. The Northwest Face was the route of the first ascent of the peak in 1942 by none other than Fred Beckey and his brother Helmy. We climbed the route on July 15, 2023.

A relaxed approach brought Larissa and I up and over Kangaroo Pass before we traversed to Kangaroo Temple. After locating the base of the route and snacking on a baguette, I set off on the first pitch, which has a reputation for being a scary but doable traverse. After finding good gear for the first half, I realized what all the fuss is about: a very spooky downclimb with only the tiniest of crimpy slopers for holds and nothing but friction for the feet. With intense concentration, I carefully made the moves and traversed to a ledge at the base of a large chimney. To my dismay there wasn’t a single crack around for protection and I was already quite run out. To make matters worse, water was running down the wall of the chimney precisely where I needed to climb. I gulped, then committed to face climbing on small edges up and out the right side of the chimney, painfully aware of the awful fall potential here. I finally snagged some jugs and hauled myself onto the sloping belay ledge, a solid 15 or 20 meters from my last piece of gear. Thrilling, and not in a good way!

Things started looking up after the first pitch horror show. The second pitch surmounted some cool blocks before firing up a powerful layback up a splitter crack – this is by far the money pitch of the route. I maximized the amount of good climbing on the third pitch by veering off the path of least resistance, stemming up a shallow dihedral with flaring cracks in the corner to a belay ledge. This was a little bit run out but that seems to be the character of this mountain… yee haw!

The fourth pitch started with a massive leftward traverse before climbing some more shallow, flared cracks to reach a final belay stance. From here, we scrambled to the summit, rappelled the North Face, and power hiked back to the car. Unfortunately, there are no restaurants open in Winthrop after 9pm…

Gear Notes

I recommend a single rack of cams .3-3, doubles of .4-1, and a set of nuts.

Strategy Notes

On the dangerous first pitch, you can somewhat protect your follower by climbing above the belay tree and placing a directional cam in the blocks that begin the next pitch. There’s not enough good gear there for an anchor, so after I placed the directional, I downclimbed back to the typical belay stance. A nasty fall is still possible here, but this improves the odds.