Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

June 25, 2026

2323m

Washington Pass / North Cascades Highway, WA

These are two lesser towers in the middle of the “Liberty Bell Group” which has some of the most sought-after objectives in the North Cascades for rock climbers. Lexington Tower is taller by a few meters but neither boasts over 100 m prominence to strictly qualify as an independent peak. However, these are well known in the climbing community and the easiest routes require at least 2 pitches of 5.6/5.7 climbing so they were still somewhat high on my list. There are 5 or 6 towers in this group depending if one wants to count “The Minuteman” and I had done the two P100m (and the two easiest) back in 2019 – South Early Winters Spire and Liberty Bell Mountain.

Elise was looking to get out on Thursday but I already had Gabbro Mtn. planned on Wednesday which would be, and did turn out to be a tiring day. I was only keen on something short but Elise was only interested in “climbing”, so I threw out the suggestion of Lexington Tower. Elise had already done Concord Tower (via North Face) but wouldn’t mind repeating the summit via South Face from Lexington/Concord col so the plan’s made. The weather would roll in later in the evening but the day would still be dry east of the Cascades divide. The weather would be mostly cloudy though, but that’s fine. I had already seen enough bluebird views from various peaks and towers in this area anyway. To climb Lexington Tower via the North Face and then Concord Tower via the South Face/NE Ridge we would be tackling each of them via the easiest possible route, respectively.

Elise and I left home at 6 am and made quick work down south. I desperately needed to catch up some sleep so that’s why we didn’t leave too early. The drive took about 3 hours and we were starting the approach shortly after 9 am. The parking was already full but I managed to squeeze my Corolla into a spot without having to park on the highway. Elise did all of the planning so all I needed was to bring my personal climbing gear and carry the 70-m single rope (which felt a tad bit “too heavy” since I only use the skinny ropes these days). The approach was longer than I thought and involved almost 700 m elevation gain. The last hundred meter into Lexington/Concord col had some scrambling on loose rocks. I thought there’s no water source so opted to carry 3 L water, which was definitely overkill.

About 10 minutes later Elise started up the first pitch on Lexington Tower. As expected, the hardest moves were right off the deck on an awkward right trending hand crack. The crack was not the typical type and the crux move involved a very low hand jam followed by stepping the right foot up onto the hand’s level. This move took me a long while to figure out, but it could also due to the lack of rock climbing I had in recent months. The middle part of the first pitch was mostly class 4 but the upper chimney involved a few mid-5th class moves on vertical terrain. A key flake was feeling hollow so I did more stemming than pulling and tried not to fully weigh on those “key handholds”. The second pitch was technically easier but the route finding was trickier. Elise had to pull out the “beta” midway as she couldn’t figure out the direction. It’s a zig-zagging pitch was lots of rope dragging. There were lots of difficult moves but nothing felt harder than 5.6. The final pitch onto the true summit was mostly class 4 and low 5th but the exposure was lethal. The plan was for Elise to lead the pitch and fix the rope for me to follow.

On the descent I down-climbed the pitch using a prusik as self-belay, and then belayed Elise down-climbing this traversing pitch. We then did two rappels using Elise’s 70 m rope and the rappelling stations were exactly the same as the belaying stations. The climb had taken us longer than expected but I was still keen on doing Concord Tower, so we took a long break and moved the gear over a house-sized boulder to the base of Concord Tower’s route.

The “class 2 ledge” traverse at the start was definitely loose and exposed but wasn’t too bad. Elise again, went ahead to lead the pitch 1 which was almost a full 60-m stretch to some bomber tree anchor high up on the NE corner of Concord Tower. The flakes weren’t as loose as indicated by some sources but the climbing texture was definitely not the classic granite type. Midway up I had to do a few moves by vege belay which also felt strange. The crux moves were near the end where I was forced to traverse right with hardly any “foot hold” and these few moves are legit 5.7. I then led the second pitch. On hindsight we should have scrambled this pitch carrying the rope. Elise led the final pitch over the “shark’s fin”. Not doing a ton of research she ended up climbing the harder Patriot Crack finish on the summit block. This took a while and of course I couldn’t really see anything from the belay stand under the shark’s fin. It was eventually my turn to climb and I thought the fin itself was rather fun (low 5th traverse/down-climbing with hardly any protection), but the Patriot Crack was definitely hard. With a top rope belay I simply didn’t give a fuck and just stepped myself up (hardly any “hand”) and I could totally see why it took so long for Elise to lead. The gear was very bad too.

The rappelling was via the direct south face underneath the true summit so this was not the same route as the one we climbed up. Thankfully the route was bolted and the anchors were obvious. The anchor on the first rappel was a bit strange such that we almost got the rope stuck. We had to combine both of our forces together to pull the rope down. The second rappel was uneventful and we finished at roughly exactly the same time as the other party doing Lexington Tower. We then packed our shits and dashed down the trail. We even went for a bushwhacking short-cut near the very end as the long switchback seemed rather unnecessary. Our C2C time was under 7.5 hours. While driving home we got hit by showers at around Sedro-Woolley so the weather was definitely closing in.