[bubblehead]

I've been trying to get Malachite for the last two years. Poor planning on my part has always left me standing at Malachite lake knowing I wasn't going any farther. This time was different. Fourth times the charm! Trace and I met up at the Monroe P&R at 6 and we were hiking up the steep Rock Lake trail before 8am. Whew, this trail is on you for 1500' up the steep ridge. We were up this and heading down into Rock Lake basin under an hour. Once you drop into the basin, you're finally in the classic Alpine Lakes.

North Peak in the clouds

Rock lake with a sea of clouds behind

One could possibly camp out there...

We left the trail and began traversing on the west side of the lake at 4800' mostly on talus. Eventually we hit the tarn outlet stream. We crossed this and began heading uphill on the left side, as the snow over the creek was super sketchy looking.

Tarn outlet, we went up the left side mostly on heather

Once past this steepish part, the snow was better and we just kept trucking uphill towards the tarn. The basin above is just stunning. What a place!

Up

At the tarn

From here, we made for the col above Panorama lake.

Sub summit of the north peak from the col

Check out those splitters!

From the col, we dropped about 60' and traversed below the east face of the north peak, then headed up to the second col at the base of the south face of the north peak. Here we got our first look at our main objective.

Heading towards the second col above Panorama lake

Malachite first look, pointy one just right of center.

Again, we lost some more elevation, traversed some more on snow and talus, and headed uphill again. We aimed for the bench just left of the notch that is west of the peak that would come up from the south route. Trace did some exposed scrambling up to the bench, I wasn't feeling that so I put my crampons on and kicked my way up to the bench. We left some stuff here and scrambled our way on up! It was mostly 3rd class with one weird exposed move and then some slightly insecure dirt/heather before getting good veggie belays and then you're on the summit!

Classic Malachite shot. STEEP!

Summit!

Must've sucked to obe the guy that carried Quickcrete all the way up here

Summit Register

Purvis Lake from high above

Glacier Peak-aboo

Treen

Moody homecourts

Turquoise

Shroud

Snoqualmie peaks

We spent 15 minutes on the summit and decided to get a move on, as we still had our eyes set on another objective. We were glad we brought the rope to rap, the downclimb was a bit more than either of us wanted to do. One rap down to the bench to gather our gear back up and then another rap down over the moat had us cruising back over towards the North Peak. I scoured the few places on the internet that any beta would exist for this, but came up short. Brown Beckey has a few vague words, but no information at all other than basically saying you might be able to do it. We got back over to the notch above Panorama lake and looked up at the south face. A small bushwhack to the west had us at the base of our chosen route. It looked like low 5th, so we dropped our snow gear, I tied in on the sharp end and gunned it. about 40' up, I hit a second class ramp that I followed for a good bit before I brought Trace up. Trace eyed a gnarly line, but it was blocky and looked like it would go, so I went for it. The climbing was actually really fun, but I couldn't relax too much as there were most definitely death blocks everywhere. I was stoked to get 3 whole pieces of gear on this pitch! But it was around 5.5, so pretty chill. I got up to the summit, made a belay and brought Trace up. Shortly after he started climbing, I heard a BIG rock go.. uh oh. Luckily, the rope kept coming up and eventually trace popped up and was like "DUDE, did you hear that?" Yes, yes I did. Spooky. We tagged the summit (No cairn or any sign of other humans being up there...) and were totally over it, time to get out of there. There was no chance of rapping our up route, so we went towards the West ridge and found an adequate rap anchor. This ridge was just the worst choss we could have imagined and had to be super careful here. I hit the ends of the rope and had to scramble down said horrible choss about 20' to heather, Trace followed and we had some shenanigans with the rope, but we were safe. We went down past a gendarme and hopped back up over the ridge, schwacked through some trees to the south and found our gear back at the base of the route. Damn. We just did that. New Route? First ascent? We still don't really know, but we will definitely be doing some more digging.

Trace topping out the North Peak, Malachite proper behind

Our route up the South Face

Terrain on the North Peak

We had a little photo shoot back at the col before we reversed the approach and were back at the car about 9 1/2 hours after we left.

Poser

work it girl

oh yeah

Show me what you got

BB

Chiefs. Can't believe that's what the top of LBC looks like

Moody Chimney and Overcoat

Heading back down, getting some H20

The tarn on the way down

[Bluebird]

Good job guys! I loved malachite but I think that North peak is something else!

[RichP]

I've had Malachite in my sights for some time though I'll probably never get to it. Good on you for persisting.

[puzzlr]

Congrats on Malachite and especially the north peak. I was looking at that closely when we passed it on our climb and decided it wasn't a scramble (we had minimal pro). I was interested because from the west the north peak is more dramatic than the main peak.

From Mile High peak

[bubblehead]

Thank you! I totally agree. I noticed it from Revolution Peak a couple of weeks ago poking up above Garfield, then saw it again on Mt. Sawyer and knew I had to climb it.

Turquoise, Malachite and Malachite North from Mt. Sawyer