Nooksack Tower

Nooksack Tower climb and Traverse to Shuksan, July 2000

This was a climb that my partner and I had on our minds for a couple of years. The first time we went back to do the tower we were turned back by abnormally high temperatures which made the approach gulley really hazardous. When we looked across the ridge that separated the Nooksack Tower from summit plateau of Mt. Shuksan we knew that we really wanted to climb that too. So we came back the next year and planned on spending three days out. We ended up coming back on the fourth day and at that point it really didn't matter. By the time we were off the ridge we were too fried to even climb up the Shuksan summit pyramid. I wish we would have now but I think at the time we thought we could make it back to the car in a few hours. Descending the Fisher chimneys took a long time so we made it to Lake Anne and called it a day.

The Price lake area is awesome and that side of the mountain is really scary. Nooksack tower with its dark rock is forbidding sitting like a sentinel over the glacier. It really is a classic cascades climb.

Climb notes: We used 2 60m 9 mms for the rappelling descent to the col between the tower and the ridge where we bivied. There were 4 raps which were from natural features with one from a Ti knife blade equalized with a stopper. Overall the rock quality on that side of the tower is pretty good although Jesse did get a "tattoo" from some falling rock during the rappel. Bring a helmet because I didn't and wished that I had... we ended up swapping the helmet with the belayer getting the helmet and the leader getting the Detroit Tigers visor.