Group Members: Paul McClellan, Mark May, Randi Schuyler, Brad Smith, and Eileen Kiely.
We met at the Patjens Lakes Trailhead and introduced ourselves to our guests Brad and Eileen. The drive up indicated it would be a smoky day due to the Black Butte fire in progress. From the trailhead we worked our way around the south side of Big Lake and found the PCNST which we followed to the climbers’ trail at a rock cairn. Here some of us cached water, then we ascended the climbers’ trail to the lower North Ridge. We followed the North Ridge towards the peak with a traverse to the west to get around a buttress and to enter the gully leading to the notch below the steep “Nose” of Mount Washington.
From here we scrambled up and to the right a few feet to find an obvious chimney, roped up and climbed this chimney to a large horn, then turned right and climbed up a steep face to the large belay/rappel ledge at the top of the Nose. We used slings around horns for leader protection and belayed each member up one by one to the ledge.
From the belay/rappel ledge we third-classed the route higher on the peak, climbing easy rock and following ledges around obstacles, until we reached a low-angle chimney near the summit. We placed a fixed line from the base of this chimney to the summit ridge and the rest of the team protected themselves with prusiks as they followed. We found only one other party of three climbers on the route and shared the summit with them for lunch.
The views from the summit were, indeed, obscured by considerable smoke, especially to the south. Still, it was an exciting first ascent for most of the team.
We descended our fixed line to bottom of the low-angle chimney. We could see a large block below us with numerous rappel slings wrapped around it, so we decided to work our way down to it to explore what that option had to offer. This turned out to offer a low-angle rappel leading to the standard rappel station above the Nose. We took this option. In hindsight it seemed to take more time than what retracing our ascent route would have taken, but it did have the benefit of providing rappel practice for the team. From the standard rappel ledge we rappelled the steep Nose to the notch below.
We descended the west scree slope to a talus field below. The upper part of the scree slope seemed to offer better footing on the left (south) side, but this took us past a more promising trail that traverses to the north once below a rock outcropping. We descended the talus to forest and picked up a trail leading west across meadows back to the PCNST and our water cache.
The hike out was interesting only in that we followed a different route through the maze of trails near the south shore of Big Lake, and were greeted by several curious campers at the lake when we arrived.
We all enjoyed a safe and successful climb, good company, and good weather in spite of the smoky views.