Solo climbing Washington's most scenic alpine peak

Hey guys, in this video I'm going to be attempting to solo climb one of Washington's most scenic alpine rock climbs, Prusik Peak. Situated in a beautiful section of the Cascades known as the Enchantments, this climbing adventure will involve an absolutely brutal approach, gaining over 6,000 vertical feet in over 10 miles, battling raging winds, trying not to get blown off the mountain, and managing the safety and logistics of a remote alpine climb all by myself. Without further ado, let's get into it. I hope you enjoy. All right, here we are. All right, we are currently at 2,421 feet. I know that the summit of the mountain that I'm trying to go to today is 8,000 feet, so let's do the math, 5,500 feet of gain. It's gonna be a big day. Hey buddy, what's up? Sorry, I gotta come through. Thanks, see you later. I'm currently heading into a beautiful, iconic alpine area known as the Enchantments. This is my first time coming here. All of the day use and overnight use of this area is permitted, and the permit system to get an overnight, especially where I'm going, is incredibly difficult. So we do not have an overnight permit, which means we are doing the approach, climb, and ascent in a day. So just to give you guys an idea of how brutal this day is gonna be, my journey starts here at the Stewart Lakes Trailhead, then climbing up four miles to my first checkpoint, Kolchak Lake, ascending up the steep and unrelenting Asgard Pass, and then traversing a few more miles through up and down terrain until finally reaching Prusik Peak. And just remember, after climbing Prusik Peak, I have to do that all again in reverse. So my objective for the day is this beautiful peak called Prusik Peak. It has this moderate route called the West Ridge. I thought it would be a perfect training objective to start getting ready for alpine climbing season. I'm definitely sweating a lot more than I thought I would. First little bit of sunlight. Oh wow. Oh my god. Yeah, for climbing. I just moved here, yeah. Behind me here is beautiful Kolchak Lake up there, Dragon Tail Peak. The most brutal part of the day today is going to be going up this pass behind me, which is called Asgard Pass. So I'm just sort of mentally preparing myself, but at least I made a friend here, Yogi. We're gonna be heading up the pass together. Let's go through the pain together. Come on, huh? Here we begin the incline to go up Asgard Pass. Yogi, you ready? Let's go. Let's do it. Yogi is sending it barefoot right now. Look at that guy. I think we got a little off trail there. That's why the scrambling kind of got a little sketchier than I thought it should have. That right there is a Karen. Nice one. All right, we're back on the right path now. Sorry for taking us on a detour. Oh yeah. Actually feels kind of good to be in the sun, huh? It was getting a little cold there. Wow, that is not a bad view at all. That is a beautiful circ. All right, so because it's getting sunny, time to put some sunblock on. Gotta stay sun protected, especially on the face of the moneymaker. Nice job on the pass. Thanks for keeping company with me. See you later. Have a good rest of your hike. Take care. Thanks so much. Yeah, see ya. All right, setting off on my own now. We officially have the cool sunglasses on. These things are designed for going fast, which is what I intend to do right now. So let's go. Here we have our first glimpse at the objective for the day, Prusik Peak. All right, Prusik Peak. It's getting closer. Getting my grip strength all warmed up for the climb. We are almost eight miles into the approach, nearly 6,000 feet of vertical gain, and we've been going for a total of five hours and 40 minutes. Got kind of this beautiful meadow here. Feels like a fairy tale, to be honest. We are starting to get close. Okay, we are almost there. This is getting exciting. I'm a little nervous. All right, so currently have one party ahead of me there, so I think I'm going to wait for them to get started. So for lunch, ultra pro tip that I have is veggie sausages. Lots of good nutrition, and you just eat them raw like this. I think the only thing that gives me cause for concern right now is the wind, especially when rappelling and dealing with ropes. The wind can kind of cause the yeah, cause the rope to fly off and get stuck in a crack. Yeah, I think that's just gonna be something that I'm gonna have to manage. Maybe I'll get up there and it's just gonna be too windy and I might just might just bail, but I think I'm gonna at least go as far as I want to with no pressure to go further than I have to. All right, there we go. All right, so we just gotta scramble up these blocky ledges to start. So right now, I am going ropeless. I just have the rope on my back here and yeah, this first little bit looks relatively chill for scrambling. I think I'm just gonna get up to any place and if I don't feel comfortable, I'll put the rope on. A little bit of jamming to do. I'm too crazy. Get a fist. So far so good. Guys, what's you guys' names? Cassidy. Noah. Noah. Yeah, cheers. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thanks guys. You mind if I come up there with you? Starting to get to the point where I don't want to be soloing anymore. All right, let's build a little bit of an anchor. After scrambling up for most of the first pitch, I decided to rope up for this one exposed looking move. For me, when solo climbing, if I have just one shred of doubt, I prefer to play it safe out of an abundance of caution. All right Morgan, have fun. I'm sure I'll keep running into you guys. I've got my anchor built right there. I've got a redirect right there that's sort of holding it up. Now I'm going to put myself on belay and here's the rope man which will help me capture progress on the rope. Basically hold it up for me to belay myself so I'm not like pulling on the rope the whole time. A little complicated, obviously. It's a system that is not as truly as safe as climbing with a partner, but it's safer than free soloing. So let's get on it. Let's start climbing again. These moves are a little exposed to just free solo, so I'm kind of glad I'm doing this. My foot just totally slipped. Nice thing about the little notches is that I get to kind of thread my rope through and it sort of acts as kind of an anchor. But once I cleared that one exposed move, the climbing turned super easy again, making the rope feel almost unnecessary and more of a nuisance. So I built an anchor and fixed my rope in order to go back and retrieve all of my gear. All right, maybe to go back there, I think we can just kind of via ferrata it. Ah, really? Okay, there we go. All right, currently 104. I think we're doing good. Once I make it back to my anchor, I decide to continue scrambling unprotected. But rather than taking the extra time to coil my rope on my back, I just remain tied in, dragging the flaked loose rope behind me. Got a little stuck there. So if you mind if I share that anchor with you? These are your guys' nuts. Oh yeah, those are bomber. Because pretty much that's that one move right off that belay you guys had. I think it was a little sketch to free solo. All right, folks. Well, here we are. I think we're on top of pitch two. It's been a little bit of a weird climb so far with the rope solo setup. But here we have crux slab, 5758 slab, one for this. All right, crux slab. Let's do this. Okay, here we go. Hopefully we don't get blown off the mountain. This second traversing pitch was where my rope solo system really started to feel ridiculous. Normally, climbing with a partner, you'd only have to cover this terrain once. But for rope soloing, I had to cover it three times. Looking back, I kind of wish that I had just removed the rope for these sections, as I think I would have ironically been exposed to less overall risk. Yo, I'm not going to be whipping. There you go. It's like a slip knot. I don't know if I'm ever rope soloing a traverse again. This kind of sucks. Here we are, back on the anchor, taking off all of our gear. Oh, slab move. Oh, see, that's what I did not want. And to make it even worse, my rope coil got stuck around a horn beneath me, so I had to downclimb off route in order to free it up. There is the summit. I got to say, the rope soloing on the traverse pitches has been, like, so annoying. Like, not even that safe feeling. Like, some of the traverses felt so unprotected. Not the best route to rope solo, I will. That's my anchor right there. Oh, we got a moment of no wind. What a luxury. For the last pitch, to gain the summit, I was relieved to finally have a stretch of vertical climbing. No more traversing shenanigans, where I could actually focus on fun, engaging rock climbing. Looks like we have this kind of beautiful looking crack right here. All right, let's tie a clove hitch here, keep the rope from feeding too much. Sweet. Finally, some real rock climbing. Let's go. I'll squeeze chimney to the top. That was really fun. I really like that crack pitch. Oh yeah, I'm getting off with the... Wow, that's a chug. Yeah, it gets a little big. All right. Right here, right here. Nice one, nice one. It's quite windy up here, but still very beautiful. It was around 3 p.m. when I reached the summit. And while I was super excited to have topped out, I knew that I still had a ton of work ahead of me and a long, grueling descent. So I didn't want to waste too much time hanging out. Leaving the summit, Morgan... What was your name again? Cassidy. Those guys are going to help me clean my gear very kindly. So I'm leaving the summit for good. Luckily, the other party was willing to clean my anchor and throw my rope down for me. So that meant I only had to rappel down once and clean my gear, and I could save myself another laborious ascent and descent. The descent was relatively straightforward, wrapping off plentiful anchor tat around granite blocks and horns. But there was a fair amount of loose rock. So I moved cautiously, knowing that the other party above me or the rope coming down could knock down loose rocks. Rope! Lovely. Perfect amount of rope. All right. I am starting to feel the exhaustion of the day. Bro is looking so majestic. Look at that slap down climb. All right, you guys. Safe descent down. That was an awesome climb. Good luck with college. Good luck with junior year of high school. Knees are starting to hurt from going downhill. Overall, body feels like a jellyfish. It is 8 15. I probably have about an hour left of daylight and four miles to get back to my car. I am hurting really bad. My mind, my body. Wow. Look at this glorious sight. I am so dead. Oh my god. All right, guys. If you enjoyed that video, hit the like button. Subscribe to the channel. I hope you have a good one. I'll see you in the next video.