Developing a New Climbing Route on Snoqualmie Pass

I remember the first time I skied all the way out to the end of the Alpental back bowls and saw the view from Draft Dodger Ridge. I couldn’t believe that such savage towers of alpine rock could possibly be hidden right there in plain sight, just outside of the ski area. While the blocky grandness of The Tooth dominated the venue in terms of pure height and mass, it was the daggers of the intervening ridge between The Tooth and Hemlock Peak that felt almost impossibly wild. The skier in me, who saw skiing everywhere, saw no possible way to penetrate this vertical landscape.

TL;DR Here's the 90 second version.

It was years before my climbing mind caught up to my skiing one, but by my mid 30’s climbing had her hooks set deep in my psyche. While bouncing all over the state and the country in pursuit of excellent alpine climbing, I’d made sure to visit the local offerings on The Tooth, Lundin Peak, Chair Peak and others; an assortment that was made far better with the 2023 addition of The Edge of Time Arete on The Fang. When I heard of this climb, I had a certain piece of stone in my head that I figured must be the location for this route. When I went to climb it, I found that the route in my head was one tower to the right of the newly minted Edge of Time. 

The Fang is awesome. The Edge of Time Arete is a beautiful, extremely enjoyable climb, with much credit to Ian Nicholson, Graham Zimmerman and Tino Villanueva for the vision and execution of its development. But, walking away from that climb, my eyes were drawn ever more strongly to the cleaner, more striking, more severe tower to its right. I walked away thinking: that’s the one that needs to be climbed. That’s the most beautiful piece of rock in this whole valley. 

Late in the summer of 2024, my friend and frequent climbing partner, Jack Taylor, and I were casting about for an enjoyable day in the mountains. Jack mentioned that it could be fun to check out the climbing potential on the tower next to The Fang. I nearly jumped out of my skin with excitement to have found someone else who saw the potential that I was seeing. It took no convincing from either of us, so we loaded our packs with a double rack, a rope, some scrub brushes, a small saw, a hand drill and a few bolts and walked up to the base of the climb on a moody, misty August day.

Our ground-up effort was an exciting mix of cryptic trad climbing on clean rock, with dirty explorations through spiky juniper bushes and multi-foot deep moss ledges. After a pitch of climbing, we trimmed some branches to open a pathway to a large treed ledge at the base of the north-facing headwall, and made another 20’ of progress before the protection ran out and the prospects grew far more severe. After scratching around for a while in search of safe passage, we eventually decided that we’d need to come back another day to try to find a way in from the top.

Our next visit a week later took us around the back of The Tooth, where we were able to approach the feature from the west with just a bit of rope-assisted Cascadian sub-alpinism, tree climbing and rock trundling. Finding ourselves atop the sharp point of the tower with no good options for natural anchors, the only thing to do was hand-drill a rappel anchor, throw a rope down the feature and start sniffing around for a classy way to climb the dang thing. 

The original vision was to create a traditionally-protected route utilizing the crack system at the back of the soaring open-book corner running nearly the full height of the feature. We knew we’d need to clean out some loose rock and defoliate the crack, but figured it would be the easiest way to unlock a route up the tower. The first blocks that needed to be removed came out dramatically, but relatively easily with the help of a standard crowbar, and we giggled with nervous glee to see them free fall for hundreds of feet before exploding on the lower angled buttress below, leaving a resounding echo, and the acrid smell of gunpowder hanging in the air. 

Feeling good about our progress, we rappelled to the next problematic block. This one, a washing-machine sized block wedged into the heart of the corner, loomed above the vast majority of the line we hoped to unlock. With the crowbar, we were able to slightly budge the block, but it only seemed to settle into its cradle. On our next visit, we added a 7 foot 2x4 to the effort, and were able to break the block in half, but it seemed to only grow more stubborn. All of which left us with the heartbreaking conundrum where we couldn’t trust the rock and weren’t willing to build a route below this hazard, but we couldn’t move the damn thing. It felt dangerously close to a dead end.

I don’t remember exactly what my plan was when I came up on a solo mission a few days later. I just wasn’t ready to give up yet, and figured we already had fixed lines up the whole feature so I might as well head up and hunt for a solution. The solution came when I switched into my climbing shoes and tried top-rope soloing the face to the climber’s right of the corner, where we had built rappel anchors for the descent. On this face, the rock was unbelievably solid and the climbing was an amazing puzzle, as fine incut edges and crimps thinned to almost nothing, but provided just enough traction to levitate through the nearly blank sections. It was legitimately the best climbing I’d ever seen in the Snoqualmie Mountains. Only trouble is that it would require bolts for protection. Plenty of them.

Regardless of the techniques utilized in the bolting of other alpine routes in the region, and any previous ambiguity around the location of the wilderness boundary, it’s very clear that the entire Tooth massif is located in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. As such, the use of power tools is prohibited. If we were going to bolt this face, we’d be doing so by hand. If we were going to clean the route, we’d be doing it with hand tools. We’d be meeting this mountain on equal footing. Investing the immense time and energy that it takes to develop alpine climbing within the laws and ethics of a wilderness setting.

So began phase two; the mission to connect all of the most solid rock from top to bottom, utilizing existing crack systems for pro when available, and bolting the sections where the cracks petered out. The tower is made of some very hard rock. The andesite deposit there, formed 20-40 million years ago has resisted the glacial carving of 40-50 distinct ice ages since its formation. What is left is nearly vertical, and bullet-hard. Good for climbing. Bad for hand-drilling bolts. The easiest of the bolts took roughly 45 minutes to drill the required 3/8” by 2.25” deep hole. The hardest took over two hours. On average, it was a good hour per bolt. 37 bolts total on the route, so basically a 40 hour work week of swinging a hammer and hitting a handheld metal drill bit into extremely hard rock, over and over again. Tap, tap, twist. Tap, tap, twist. Forearms screaming, hands blistered, ears ringing. 

When not drilling there was plenty else to do. While the line featured numerous high-quality crack systems, many of them were already home to grasses, shrubs, moss, rocks and dirt. While the line is nicely punctuated by ample belay ledges, each was stacked with centuries worth of dirt, stone and vegetation. While the faces were generally solid, they weren’t exempt from loose rock and exfoliating flakes. Dirty, grungy, workmanlike labor hanging in harnesses and kneeling on ledges. Moving debris down the wall, one brush-sweep, crowbar-pry or handful at a time. This is not the surgical-grade white granite of the Sierra; this is the hairy gnar of the Cascades.

For each trip to the wall, there was 3 hours of round-trip hiking, so a good percentage of a given day was spent commuting. Another hour of faffing and rigging before any real work got done. There were days when I’d install 2-3 bolts, and scrub maybe a half a pitch before I ran out of time. On those days, it felt like the work would never end. By the middle of the summer, I was feeling beat down and burned out. Then Jack had hot streak with his drill and sunk 7 bolts in a single day, and things started looking up. 

Shortly afterward I spent an outing camping in the basin below the route to put in three days of work and save the daily hike time. Spending time alone on the wall with some good tunes and fine weather, I finally realized that the joy was in the process. That I loved having a concrete objective in the mountains to work toward during my free time. That contributing something lasting to the climbing community that has given me so many great days in the mountains was a deeply fulfilling exercise. I sat on a ledge, pouring dirt and rocks out of my shoes and kneepads as the rose tones of a late summer evening painted the west face of Snoqualmie Mountain and I realized with gratitude that I was exactly where I wanted to be.

This was the energy as summer transitioned to fall, and by October, the finish line was in sight. And a good thing is was, as winter came early to the Cascades. On October 16th, we hiked up in a fresh layer of snow and spent a chilly day on the north-facing wall installing the last couple of rappel anchors and pulling the fixed lines off the wall. Ten days later, I was skiing knee-deep powder on Washington Pass, and the project was put to bed for the winter.

If winter came early, spring, perhaps even more so. It was a dismal winter for snowfall, nonetheless made enjoyable by skiing with no expectations, in every condition imaginable. The underwhelming season left the mountains with a far thinner coat of snow than is standard. During a March ski tour to the Chair Peak shoulder I noted that the route was already almost entirely snow-free with the exception of the major ledges. I like hiking to go climbing, but I like ski touring to do so far better. Willing to trade a bit of snow-futzing on route for the enjoyment of ski commuting, I was able to easily convince Jack to ski in with me the next day, and on March 23rd, we got the first ground-up free ascent of the peak, now coined The Canine. 

We spent the rest of the spring on a few more missions of tidying, enjoying the route and installing the final bits of high-grade stainless steel hardware to the rappel anchors to help the route stand the test of time. Here, then, we now find ourselves. With pride, love to the community, and love for the place, we offer up Handsome Mongrel. 5 pitches, 5.11. The route name harkens to the hand-drilled protection, the mixed style of climbing and the location on The Canine. Our work here is done. It’s your turn. We can’t wait to hear from the community as climbers begin to sample the goods. Enjoy, and let me know how it goes!

Thanks to Jack Taylor for the laughter and partnership, to Brad Kohlrus, Mike Davies, Ian Nicholson and Matt Henry for putting in time on the project, and to Roger Strong at Black Diamond for helping with replacement equipment as the mountain ate our gear in the development process. For people with interest in further development on this feature, Jack and I will be happy to lend time and information, but ask respectfully that conservative wilderness ethics continue to be respected, as the protection of our public lands are at an all-time risk, and now is not the time to entertain the gray areas in the name of ease or efficiency. This mountain will continue to give, but we must give in equal measure.