[ragman and rodman]

Yellow Lichen Castle and Yellow Lichen Towers are located on the NW side of Ingalls Peak in the Teanaway Area. ---------------------------------------------------- Background... skip this section if you want to go directly to the trip report: Over the last 10 years I've been working on a list of mountains, peaks, hills and bumps located in the Teanaway Area. In 2014 the Yellow Lichen Towers first caught my attention when I was looking at Beckey's Brown Book for beta on doing the east summit of Ingalls Peak. I didn't pursue the towers at that time because I was more interested in the east summit of Ingalls... howerver, after doing the east summit of Ingalls in June, 2015, I started taking a closer look at the towers. In July 2015, Snowdog, rodman and I did Van Epps Peak (same general area as the towers) and scrambled the ridge over toward the towers... but opted to leave the ridge and head down to Lake Ann before reaching the towers... however, I was able to get some pretty good photos of the towers and what I have chosen to name "Yellow Lichen Castle"... and it became very clear that while it might be possible to scramble the NW ridge of the castle, the towers would require very experienced climbers to reach the summits. After returning from the 2015 Van Epps trip I shared my photos of the castle and towers with rocman and iraman (both very experienced climbers) and started the conversation about doing them. In May 2016, I googled "Yellow Lichen Towers" and all I found was a link to peakbagger.com showing a 1999 report by Austin Smith for "Yellow Lichen Tower"... but there was no "s" at the end of the word "tower"... and it looked like he had identified the location of the towers incorrectly on the topo Map... adding to the mystery was his two sentence trip report that said "Rotten crumbly towers of dubious repute. Bring hardhats, hutzpah and then question why you are there." I decided to contact Austin Smith through peakbagger.com and see if I could get some clarification on his naming the peak "Yellow Lichen Tower", the location he identified on the topo map and why he referred to multiple towers in his trip report, but only a single tower in naming the peak. I also included a 2015 photo or two for him to review. Austin Smith replied to my inquiry on May 23, 2016: "Ah yes, Yellow Lichen Tower. I remember it as if it were yesterday. NOT. I looked at my notes and they say, "wear helmets. 6 hours RT from car". That much aside I recall them being low 5th class and not particularly pleasant. In no way should you take this as me trying to talk you out of it. I would recommend a small rack with a piece or two <2". A 50m rope is sufficient I recall. I was routinely soloing mid 5th in those days so consider these technical climbs. I do not recall if we climbed just the highest of the towers or if we did them all." Austin Smith added this on May 24, 2016: "I will contact Peakbagger and get the location modified. Let me know if you need any other assistance. I think me using YLT without an S was simply a typo." Beckey's Brown Book states that in 1961 Jim Wickwire, Gene Prater and Fred Dunham were the first people to climb the three towers... and it gave brief descriptions of the routes for each tower... and as luck would have it, rocman knows Dunham and decided to send him my 2015 photos to get his thoughts on the topic... with the outcome being that the towers are identified correctly in my photo... agreeing with Austin Smith's feeling that he had identified the tower locations incorrectly on peakbagger. Armed with this beta from Austin Smith and Fred Dunham, rocman and I decided to do Van Epps Peak in July 2016 and then scramble the ridge over to the base of the towers to do some final recon on them before making a summit attempt in 2017. I can only speak for myself here, but the towers are much more intimidating when viewed up close. Now... all that is left to do is scramble the castle and climb the towers!! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Trip Report: Turn off of the paved Salmon La Sac Road (aka WA-903) onto FS-4330... drive 7.6 miles of good dirt and gravel road and turn right onto Road 301 (aka Road 170 on the USGS map and NF-160 on Bing Maps)... then drive 2.6 miles of very rugged road and park (4050') at the junction of roads 301 and 302... a high clearance vehicle is required for Road 301... the road is deteriorating more and more every year... my Subaru Outback barely made it. We hiked (uphill) Road 302 for a half-mile and came to a junction (4465') with the N. Fork Fortune Creek Trail... which we bypassed and continued on Road 302 as we wound our way up to a junction (~5300') with Road 303... where we turned right onto 303 and followed it up to a junction (5830') with Esmeralda Basin Trail #1394 which we followed for 1.5 miles to Lake Ann (note that the sign says 2 miles to Lake Ann) and our base camp for the next two nights. We left camp (~6160') the next morning before 7am and were on the NW ridge (~6760') of Yellow Lichen Castle in less than 45 minutes... where we dropped our packs and made the fairly short ridge scramble to the summit (7014')... Class 3... perhaps a few Class 4 moves depending on a person's disposition. We traced our steps back to our packs and traversed underneath Yellow Lichen Castle over to the base of the west tower of Yellow Lichen Towers... where all three of us reached the summit (6965' on my GPS)... rocman and iraman climbed the tower without the use of aid... in other words, the rope was just there for protection in case of a fall... while I aid-climbed the tower... meaning that I relied heavily on the rope (and iraman who was at the top of the rope) to make upward progress. Our route was Class 5.5 although iraman and rocman saw a potentially easier route as they rapelled off of the summit. See the "Technical Details" section below for more detailed information on climbing the towers. After getting down from the west tower I was both mentally and physically exhausted... so I watched rocman and iraman climb the much easier east tower while I gathered my wits and composure. No one in our group climbed the middle tower due to using up all of the sling webbing for rappels on the other two towers. We got back to camp around 4:30pm... where we cooled off in Lake Ann... had a nice dinner... and got a good night's sleep. We got up early the next morning and traced our steps back along the Esmeralda Basin Trail to Road 303... where we decided to continue over to Van Epps Pass, using the County Line Trail and the N. Fork Fortune Creek Trail to get down to Road 302... leaving a half-mile road walk back to our car. The total trip was 11 miles, gaining 3487 feet of elevation. Day 1... car to Lake Ann... 4.7 miles, gaining 2174 feet of elevation. Day 2... Lake Ann to the castle and towers and back to Lake Ann... 2.3 miles, gaining 1430 feet of elevation. Day 3... Lake Ann to the car... 4 miles, gaining 55 feet of elevation. Photos, trailhead directions and downloadable GPS track for our trip to Yellow Lichen Castle and the west and east towers of Yellow Lichen Towers. ----------------------------------------------------- Technical Details for climbing Yellow Lichen Towers: Information provided by Charlie Hickenbottom (aka rocman). West Tower - Begin at base of large gully on northern edge of west slopes. Ascend past chockstone (class 3), then up class 2 gully to the hidden ledge system that is directly below the west face. From the hidden ledge, the standard route follows a shallow incipient ledge system left to right across the west face, then back left to reach the summit ridge. Beckey, page 290, reports this as fourth class, but assume exposed low fifth-class climbing. A mid-fifth class alternative involves scrambling easy ledges to the notch, up and across another easy ledge to the east face, then up a solid crack to reach the summit ridge. Several feet of webbing is needed to establish a rappel off the summit horn down to the hidden ledge. From the hidden ledge another sling anchor is established to rappel away from the ascent gully towards the south. East Tower - Ascend steep exposed ledges and corners to the notch between the middle and east towers (class 3-4). From here climb the north face via face climbing and a crack system (low fifth class). Have several feet of webbing available to set up a rappel off the summit block. From just below the notch another sling is set to rappel part way down the class 3-4 section, leaving an exposed scramble down to talus. Middle Tower - We ran out of sling webbing for rappels, so opted not to climb. The south face begins from the same notch as for the East Tower. It is reported in Beckey as class 4, but appears to be mid-fifth class terrain. Climbers: Ira Rushwald, Charlie Hickenbottom, Roger Gervin, August 10, 2017 ....

[puzzlr]

I love the photo markups. Congrats on finally making it up some of those.

[BarbE]

Way to go! Congratulations to you and to ira & rocman! Now, we can all breathe a sigh of relief and put to rest the notion of having to climb those Yellow Lichen Towers! After all the YLT pictures I've posted over the years, these might be my last ones.

Yellow Lichen Towers, NOT waiting to be climbed by Ragman anymore

Yellow Lichen towers

[FiveNines]

Good stuff. Thanks for the lesson.