The Wine Spires are an impressive sight at Washington Pass and feature several of the best routes in this area. Mitchell Mcauslan and I did a fun linkup of Paisano Pinnacle’s West Ridge to Burgundy Spire’s North Face on June 13, 2026. I had visited the Wine Spires twice in the past planning to complete this same linkup, but some poor planning left me without the time to climb Burgundy and arrive to work the next morning! I was easily convinced to go give it another shot because the West Ridge of Paisano is incredibly high quality in its own right.

On my prior attempts, we camped high at Bench Camp at 6500 feet. This time, Mitchell and I decided to climb the “easy way”: single push, car to car. If you’re doing a single route in the Wine Spires, I believe this is the best approach because the hike to bench camp is fairly mellow and easily done in the dark. To maximize daylight, try to hit Bench Camp right at sunrise. Daylight is helpful for the terrain above Bench Camp.

After an early morning start, Mitchell racked up at the base of Paisano’s West Ridge. Mitchell is a strong climber and has no problem cranking through off-route variations. Throughout the day, we opted for several harder variations to the route which added some fun variety compared to my prior ascents. Pitch 1 normally covers forgettable low-fifth terrain to gain the ridge crest, but Mitchell immediately noticed the perfect hand crack in a corner to the right, and detoured to climb it. The crack tightened to fingers before it pinched off completely, requiring a committing move on a slabby right foot. I took the second pitch all the way to the base of the best pitch of the route: the Twin Cracks. This is a clean, high quality pitch that would be a classic at any crag! It’s fair for old school 5.8, but 5.9 feels a bit more honest to me.

Two more long pitches brought us to the summit of Paisano Pinnacle, including another 5.9 twin cracks pitch that bypasses the typical (and awesome) option out right on 5.7 twin cracks to run out slab. There seem to be twin crack features all over the place on this route – it feels like you can find high quality climbing almost any way you go!

Paisano Pinnacle is a lower spire, conveniently topping out near mid-height on Burgundy Spire. Mitchell and I downclimbed off of Paisano and traversed to the base of Burgundy. I took off on a long, meandering, nondescript pitch on poor rock, almost taking a horrific whipper when a foothold broke as I downclimbed from a bad line. Damn! The character of the climbing changed from joyful, clean rock climbing on Paisano to loose adventure climbing the moment we set off on Burgundy. I enjoy adventure climbing but this first pitch was pretty exciting for my taste.

Thankfully, the rock got better as Mitchell took us up the thrilling second pitch to Burgundy Ledge. A quick walk and scramble through an icy tunnel took us to the right edge of the ledge. We continued questing upwards, navigating creatively up the line of least resistance out right. I took the final pitch up a 5.8 offwidth that intimidated me. Good protection and secure climbing easily saw me through – this is a fun pitch and very well protected with cams .75-4. From the top of the offwidth, a sharp ridge traverse took us to the summit. Finally! Success felt pretty sweet on my third attempt, and it felt fairly casual to boot. Overall, just an enjoyable day of alpine romping. Something like 8 rappels and downclimbing brought us to the ground and back to the car before dark.

This linkup is a super fun day out – almost all of the good climbing is on Paisano, but it’s totally worth it to quest up Burgundy while you’re at it. I consider this linkup to be very soft for grade IV as given in Ian Nicholson’s Washington Pass Guidebook – we knocked out whole thing in 10 pitches with only 7 hours on route. That said, we were linking pitches and moving well. Either way, it makes for a long and memorable day out – do it!

Gear Notes

A 70m rope is best for this climb to help link pitches and complete the long rappels. We used cams .2-4, doubles .3-2, offset nuts, and many long sings. There was some snow on the approach but no steep stuff, so approach shoes worked great and we did not carry crampons or axes. You can scope the approach from the car to make a call on snow gear.

Strategy Notes

Mitchell and I reached Bench Camp in 1.5 hours from the car. There is year-round water here!