I first tried climbing Ingalls Peak in May of 2018 with my childhood friend Jeremy.
We’d settled on taking a crack at the South Face, the standard route up the mountain. It’s an easy affair: four short pitches of low fifth-class lead to the final summit scramble. Truth be told, it’s not the most exciting climb. In fact, it hadn’t even been our first choice that day.
We’d arrived in Leavenworth the previous evening with hopes of hiking up to Colchuck lake and spending a couple days lounging by the lake and bagging Colchuck Peak, but we’d been defeated by Leavenworth’s infamous permit lottery. We’d hoped to stand a good chance in the morning lottery since it was mid-week, but three other groups had shown up and applied for the Colchuck Lake zone. A one in four chance. Not great odds. It had been no surprise when the ranger had drawn another group leader’s name from the hat, but I’d still stormed off angrily as a mild, almost apologetic rainfall beat against the colorful hardshells of other permit hopefuls.
“Whatever,” I’d grumbled to Jeremy as we sat back in my car. “Let’s go do Ingalls.” We’d driven off without another word.
We crested Ingalls Pass after two hours of wet, windy hiking. We couldn’t even see the peak, smothered in capes of grey clouds. Our prospects weren’t too good. We’d passed two groups coming off failed attempts on Mount Stuart, a nearby, much taller peak, and they’d both warned us that the entire valley was still choked in snow. We’d brought neither crampons nor ice axes. I’d made a gametime decision at the trailhead to leave them in the car.
Luckily, a small break in the clouds allowed me to spot Dog’s Tooth Crag, a highly recognizable feature just left of Ingalls Peak. At least we knew where to go. We trudged across the valley, our approach shoes getting wet in the snow. After a miserable slog, we made it below the small col where the route started. By then the weather had somewhat cleared, and we could just glimpse the dark hunk of brown rock above us. It was cold and the weather was unstable, but we hadn’t come here for nothing. I racked up and made short work of the easy first pitch.
Things started getting tough halfway through the second pitch. The fog closed in again below me so I couldn’t see Jeremy, and I had to climb with the unnerving sight of my rope snaking into nothingness below. Still, Jeremy paid out the rope as I climbed, so I knew that beneath the curtain of smoke was an attentive belayer.
I made an anchor and Jeremy joined me at the third belay. He wasn’t in a great mood. His feet were cold, and he couldn’t feel his toes. I shrugged him off, reminding him that the summit beckoned. I went to work on the third pitch, another easy, low-fifth class affair. I was within sight of the anchors when it started snowing. It was a light snowfall, thin and shaken by wind gusts, as if we’d been inside a half-filled snowglobe. Still, it was enough to make Jeremy panic. “I really don’t like this,” he shouted up to me several times. “It’s fine,” I yelled back down time and again. I was focused on the anchors above me. We hadn’t been able to do Colchuck, and now we were going to miss out on Ingalls, this easiest of easy climbs? Not on my watch.
I made the anchors and belayed Jeremy up. By the time he joined me on the tiny ledge, it was fully dumping. “We can still make it,” I told him. “It’s just a little cold and windy, but we can’t get lost on this route.” But Jeremy was adamant. He was wearing thin socks and hadn’t been able to feel his toes in some time. He had no interest in continuing.
I lost the argument. We set up a rappel and retreated. As I glided down the rope, a tiny hole in the clouds revealed the rocky lip onto which I would have pulled myself at the top of the fourth and final pitch.
We’d missed the summit by fifty feet.
* * *
Two months later, I returned to the South Face with my good friend Melissa. This time, I was determined to reach the top. I couldn’t possibly fail twice on this entry-level climb, could I? No, the summit might as well already be in the bag.
Melissa and I had dated for a while, and it was the we’d spent any extended amount of time together since the break-up. I think we were both pleasantly surprised at how well we got along during the drive in. We went to sleep in the back of my old Toyota Highlander, looking forward to a day of climbing and renewed friendship.
The weather couldn’t have been more different if it had been opposite day. It was a perfect day, complete with a high, white-hot sun, and just three or four fluffy, innocent clouds to properly punctuate the eternal blue spread of sky.
The Spring snowpack had disappeared, and our approach shoes only touched dirt until Ingalls Pass. Across the valley, Mount Stuart thrust its sharpened mass into the sky perfectly. Ingalls Peak modestly reigned over the other side of the valley. It was my first unhindered view of the mountain: a squat wedge of crenelated rock, as if someone had broken a turret off an ancient castle and dumped it there for us to climb.
No time to waste. We headed down the valley and reached Ingalls Lake quickly. From there, we donned micro-spikes and ice axes and trudged up to the small notch where the climb begins.
The weather was still perfect, but now a human factor stopped our ascent: a long ant-line of climbing parties inching up the face. Of course. We hadn’t been the only climbers in Seattle to have the same idea, and presently we had to reckon with a crowd of pilgrims come to pay their respects to this humble route.
I don’t wish to bore anyone, nor do I wish to proselytize at length to my reader-base (hi, mom!) about a certain climbing club that treats the Cascades like its own personal property, so I’ll skip the details of which basic rules of climbing decorum were trampled that day. Suffice it to say that we endured miserably long, utterly needless waits at each belay station, and that the juicy plum of a beautiful summit barely consoled me from slovenly affronts to climbing conventions that exist to safeguard the experience of the many, but are too often eschewed to the benefit of the very few.
Still, the climb and the views had been beautiful, and I’d taken care of fifty feet of unfinished business, so it was hard to call the day a failure, though it had undeniably had the feel of a formality. Rather, it felt like I’d removed an asterisk from the name of Ingalls Peak, having previously climbed 99% of the mountain. For Melissa, it had been an entirely new climb and experience, and I’d drawn more happiness from seeing her reach the top than from my own ascent.
After all, I’d essentially done the climb already, and in a much more engaging style, against the vagaries of weather, and, more importantly, in the solemn, inspiring ambiance that can only be conferred on a rope team by isolation and adversarial circumstances.
Still, the climb withMelissa hadn’t quite felt like a visit to the DMV. There had been glittering views of Ingalls Lake, Mount Rainier, and many other Cascadian treasures. We’d even watched a bold soul launching a paraglider from the summit of Mount Stuart.
Jealous of the colorful glider effortlessly soaring down-valley, I’d rigged the first rappel and started the long trek down with a stark, limited feeling that could best be summed up by one phrase: mission accomplished.
* * *
I wasn’t done with Ingalls.
In July 2019, I returned with my good friend Lauren, this time to climb the East Ridge. Unlike its south-facing cousin, the East Ridge is a hairy enterprise. Aside from the initial first pitch over broken terraces of scree and dirty rock, the route gains almost no elevation. It is a true traverse, complete with long sections of knife-edged “climbing,” tricky terrain that must be down-climbed and protected, and choss-covered pitches where holds crumble into dry dust when you pull on them. Poor rock characterizes the route more than anything, and one must be prepared to “chossaneer” to reap the rewards: a true alpine setting, mind-boggling 360 degree views throughout the whole climb, and the accomplishment of traversing what is not an insignificant peak.
Same formula as last time: we drove to the trailhead the night before and passed out in the back of my Highlander. I knew we had our work cut out for us when we awoke to high winds in the morning. If it was blowing like this 4,000 feet below the summit, what would it be like on the ridge?
Still, we’d driven three hours, so we got in gear and made the all-too familiar ascent to Ingalls Pass, pausing every so often to let vicious, dust-loaded gusts of wind wash over us. As we neared Ingalls Pass, the galls blew down a weather-beaten hiker who shouted over the din of the wind that it was “really whipping up there” and hurried back down towards the valley floor. We poked our heads above the pass and were immediately pelted by winds that felt less like displaced air and more like angry freight trains.
We could have turned around, but the same logic drove us across the valley: now we’d not only driven three hours, but also hiked uphill for two. We owed it to ourselves and to the mountain to take this adventure as far as it could go.
The wind died down as we neared the start of the climb, but I wasn’t kidding myself. The hulk of Ingalls was shielding us from the storm as we drew nearer to it. What would await us on the ridge once we’d climbed the first pitch?
We donned micro-spikes, ice axes, and helmets, and climbed up the snow-choked gully guarding rotten bands of rock, below which we threw on harnesses and rock gear. Abominable route-finding mistakes on my part turned the pitch into two, but soon I was belaying Lauren up to a small ledge right below the ridge. We were about to get our comeuppance.
A large, alarmingly hollow flake precluded using the rock face above me to traverse to the ridge. I shoved a #3 camelot behind the flake, quietly regretted my lack of belief in an afterlife, and launched into questionable acrobatics across the flake, my feet skittering on the polished shield of the face below as I grunted my way over. Breathing a sigh of relief as the massive flake stayed attached to the face, I pulled myself onto the ridge and braced myself.
There wasn’t a breath of wind. Nothing. Just the holy, frozen silence of this lonely mountain ridge, and around me, endless tapestries of jagged crags, lakes, peaks, forests, and the smoky band of the horizon shimmering in the distance. Of course, the wind could start up again, and if it did so while we were in the middle of the ridge, we would be in massive trouble. I stayed there for a while, wondering, looking for a sign. Should we risk it? Was it worth it? Far above, Mount Stuart looked down on me, imposing and moody as ever. It seemed to say: “well, are you just gonna stand there gawking, or are you gonna climb?” I decided to take the hint and start across the ridge.
I don’t really remember any individual pitch of the climb, but a spicy few sections have left indelible marks on my memory. I remember an insecure, blocky gendarme I had to squirm around, and a heinous downclimb that I knew, unfortunately for Lauren, would be much easier to lead than to follow. I remember a terrifying, cardboard-thin arete with 400-foot drop-offs on either side, and I remember wondering if the chossy rock would even hold my pro if I fell (in which case, of course, it would be better to fall on the side of Ingalls Pass to make it easier on the poor saps who’d have to scrape my sorry butt off the rocks below.) I remember wandering across a crumbling plateau of coffee-cake rock for half an hour, searching and searching for solid cracks in which to build a half-passable anchor. I also remember my relief once Lauren and I had made it through the crux safely (and on a highly questionable anchor), and the realization that no, the wind hadn’t started up again, and that even if it did now it no longer mattered, because we were safe and on the homestretch, with only two easy pitches left. Lastly, I remember the weight I felt sloughing off my shoulders as I started across the final, easy rope-length, with the now-familiar summit gleaming ahead of me, no longer a hope against the odds, but a beautiful, shining guarantee of success, a just reward for our toils and for the risks we had been bold enough to take.
I took the last few steps to the summit and belayed Lauren up. We stood on the summit for a while, the air perfectly still, the views free of clouds or mist. It was my second time on the summit, on this concentric point from which the mountain’s features flowed into the world.
To my surprise, I found that my eyes were wet, and that a new feeling was bubbling within my ribcage. I wasn’t quite sure what it was. The achievement hadn’t been large enough to warrant such emotion...this wasn’t Mount Rainier or even a hard, technical line. I hadn’t had to overcome much to be here.
I soon understood the new feeling brewing in my chest. It was the certainty that I’d never come back here. I’d done all I wanted to do on Ingalls Peak. I’d tasted defeat. I’d climbed it in perfect conditions. I’d felt frustration waiting in line. I’d tackled the harder line on it, grappled with self-doubt, taken a risk, and come out ontop. I’d done all I wanted to do on this mountain. It had been beautiful, banal, scary, thrilling, boring, and vibrant. And I was done. There were too many other mountains to climb, too many other experiences to have, too little time left to me, too much life needing to be lived, too many experiences waiting to be had to ever justify the investment of time to stand on this summit again. It was time to move on.
I thought of Maurice Herzog’s famous parting lines in his book, Annapurna:
“Annapurna, to which we had gone empty handed, was a treasure on which we should live the rest of our days. With this realization we turn the page: a new life begins.
There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men.”
We hadn’t climbed Annapurna. The East Ridge of Ingalls Peak had barely been a noteworthy ascent within my own mediocre, insignificant record as an alpinist. And yet, it was with a sense of pride that I turned to Lauren and explained myself:
“I’ll never come back.”
The page was turned. We headed back down to see what else this crazy old world had in store for us.
