[Fletcher]

Kyle, Jake and I climbed The Methow Needle on Friday. Cool peak! We parked at the first pullout south of Lone Fir CG and got started shortly before 6am. We had to hike a quarter mile back down to highway, then guessed on where we should enter the forest. There is an old overgrown trail that goes up the south side of Pine Creek but we werent able to find it until we were close to our crossing point. It didnt really matter, the schwackiing wasn't that bad.

starting out

We located a good crossing log around 4500 ft. The log was fairly thin and bounced slightly as we walked across it. Because of the ripping torrent rushing underfoot, it was a little heady. After crossing the creek, we promptly got sucked into thick slide alder that we thrashed through for an hour or so. Eventually, we broke out of the alder to much more pleasant travel.

outta the brush!

We took the prominent rib just to the right of the main drainage dropping down from below the summit. A little bit of fun scrambling was had but it was mostly class 2 until about 7200 ft where we got suckered into an attractive looking gully that bisected cliffy terrain. This gully seemingly dead-ended, but we were able to scramble out of it near its apex. Above this, we roped up and protected a short 5th class step, THEN we found more cruiser terrain to the base of the rock climb.

expanding views

scramble terrain

the gully

the gully

guys coming up the gully

summit in sight!

At the base of the summitblock, I racked up, crossed the snow filled gully and hopped on the rock. The first pitch was the crux for us. Apparently many parties have an easier time here with more snow covering this pitch. A few awkward moves with runout pro followed by pulling all of my weight up a disconcertingly small tree, and the climbing eased.

Kyle coming up the first pitch

I then lead another short and much easier pitch to the base of the 5.5ish layback/hand crack. The crack was super fun, and harder than I expected as I hadnt lead any trad or even done any rock climbing in months. From the top of that pitch, the summit was right above our heads. We took turns climbing out to tag the airy summit. Excellent views!

and old register

friends

friends

our entry

views

views

views

views

views

We got down off the rock in 3 easy raps. From up high, it looked like we could completely avoid all the brush we thrashed through on the way in by dropping more directly down from the summit and skirting around all of the alder skier's right. This worked out really well for us.

PeeWee on rappel

looking back

We made excellent time back down to Pine Creek and quickly found a perfect log crossing. Much less sketchy than our first. We then found the Pine Creek Trail and cruised out to the car. Awesome day! ~9.5 miles ~4500 ft of gain

[raising3hikers]

Peewee on rappel! Yes