Intermediate Alpine Climb - Concord Tower/South Face

Trip Report

Climbed after climbing Lexington N Face. See trip report for Lexington here:  https://www.mountaineers.org/activities/trip-reports/intermediate-alpine-climb-lexington-tower-north-face/view

Getting to the start of P1 of Concord S Face was tricky because there is snow/a cornice covering the walk over to it. We were able to hike up some snow and rig a rappel off of a tree to get us down to the start of the route:

3:30 PM started climbing P1. Very fun climbing, favorite pitch! It's straight forward 5.6 climbing with a reachy 5.7 move at the end of the pitch.

P2 - I'd recommend simul-climbing or scrambling this pitch. There's a couple 5.2ish scrambly moves right at the start of the pitch and then it's a 3rd class scramble until you get to the shark fin. We pitched it out and belayed off a tree just above the 5.2ish scramble which felt unnecessary in hindsight. We walked with kiwi coils to the shark fin.

P3 - Place an anchor at the start of the shark fin and walked across. Not much protection available but we were able to sling a couple horns on the way down.

Laying on the start of the shark fin & checking out the beta on the final pitch to the summit.

Alissa making her way over the Shark fin!

P4 - We did the final belay at the tree. There was some snow cover getting to the true start of P4 but we were able to climb off to the left of that and then traverse over. Gabe climbed up the 5.8 patriot's crack but there was no good pro on it. I traversed over to get on the bear hug move to the summit. Loved this pitch, it was super fun and good pro.

Good view of the final pitch. I went straight up and the around the corner to the right to go up the standard pitch. You can see snow is blocking the normal way around. Gabe went straight up the entire pitch and did the 5.8 crack variation.

5:30 PM - Everyone on the summit.

We rigged 1 double rope rappel directly down the face of the summit. We ended up leaving a shiny new purple sling and a new rap ring because the pro left on there was suspect. One of the rappel bolts was a spinner but we were not able to pull the bolt out and were able to tighten it. 

Gabe rapping!

6:30 PM - We were all down and pulled the rope and started our hike out. Luckily the snow was much better than we anticipated on the way out and we had some great plunge stepping most of the way.

We did see some bear prints in the gully!

7:45 PM Back at cars.

Super fun day climbing. I really loved both routes and would love to go back and try to tag Liberty Bell in the same day!

Map