The Mole and The Shrew

Sounds like the beginning to a children's story, but these two peaks help form the quartet of spires that is the Rat Creek Group.  This collection of towers lies just a few short miles from Icicle Road as the crow flies, but a world away when you consider the trail less expanse of bushwhacking and blow downs separating it from would-be climbers.  For our first single day alpine attempt, town to town, human powered, we chose the Mole, the largest in this quartet of spires lying just in view from the bottom of the canyon.

Rat Creek Group.

Coffee-ed up and ready for an adventure we rolled out of Leavenworth and started pedalling towards the mountains early in the day.  A 6:30 start got us up to the 6ish mile on Icicle in about 45 minutes, we locked up our bikes and transitioned onto the trail leading to the Yellowjacket tower.  The base of the Mole sits almost 5000 vertical feet above the road, covered mostly by bushwhacking.  Just as the mornings first light was about to reach us we hooked around to the south and into the heart of Hook Creek.  After we left the trail we began to hack our way towards the creek and towers above.

Sparing the details, a slow continuous slog through alders, boulders, blow downs, over logs, under trees, on and on up the hillside ensued.  We finally reached the bottom of the mole and began to climb around 1pm.

Out of the woods and nearing the Mole.

The climbing on the mole was good fun, 500 feet of easy, adventurous 5.7 climbing on its North Face that we ended up simul-climbing most of.  We celebrated on the summit and soaked up the fist sun we'd really been in the whole day, having managed to stay in the shade for most of the approach.  A few rappels and short scramble down the east side brought us back to the base.

View of Temple Ridge from the Summit.

Taking a look at the register.

Above us now the beautiful east face of The Shrew lie in the shade, the descent back to the road in the sun, our decision to climb was quickly settled.  We ditched our packs in hopes of going a little lighter and started up the climb.  A quick scramble up its first 5.5 pitch brought us to the "crux" pitch, a 5.10 bulging hand crack that we both easily dispatched.  Although the rock here was of poor quality, the climbing was awesome, a truly sandbagged 5.10 to make me feel invincible.  From here the climb was described as "5.8+ following the lichened arete".  Lichened it was and these short two pitches provided for some of the scariest climbing.  A short pitch left Liz shaken and questioning her faith, and another required me to have an out of body experience to reach the top and set up a fixed line to haul on.  But seriously, the ridge was basically climbing a sheet of dry but slippery moss draped over a smooth slab, any features at all were packed with dust, dirt, and debris.  Somehow we tapped the inner mountain goat and made the send.  The actual summit was a tiny pinnacle that lay another 100 feet of away.  A quick scramble and we were enjoying the throne of glory.

Heading up the ridge to the summit, into the darkness and onto the lichen.

Summit.

Liz standing atop the summit of the Shrew, with the previously climbed North Face of The Mole in the background.

North Face of the mole, the route follows mossy cracks up and to the left, then back right on to the summit.

Looking up Icicle Canyon and down on the Blockhouse Tower.

A single rappel gained a treacherous gully that we slowly stumbled and rappelled down, using up some of the precious mountain booty of webbing and carabeiners we'd found in the weeks before.  Around 8pm we reached the base of the climb, grabbed our packs and started to run down to the road.  While we were climbing the descent had once again fallen under shadow, which meant we enjoyed almost all of our day in the cool shade.  It also meant we had little time until overall darkness descended and we were picking our way over and through all the craziness ahead with a headlamp.  We did the best we could but were trapped in a maze of large dead, and small living, trees with only a small beam of light to offer an insight to the path ahead.  We put our heads down and trundled our way up, getting scraped, knocked down, stabbed, and generally beat up over and over.  Eventually we escaped the bush and got back onto the trail coming down from Yellowjacket Tower.  We followed this back to the road and our bikes waiting in the bushes.  A quick ride back to town and we were pulling into the driveway right around 11:30 pm.  Whew,  This was a long full day that left us tired and sore, but we accomplished a lot and climbed some beautiful peaks, all, under our own power.