Prusik Peak is a lovely mountain located in the Enchantment Lakes area of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in the Cascade Mountain. It is an iconic representation of the Enchantments, showing up frequently in photos with golden larch trees, as like this one I took in 1971.
I climbed it with Karl Kaiyala, a high school friend. We would see each other occasionally at the University of Washington Intramural Activities (IMA) building and somehow we decided to climb it one weekend in June or early July. Since he had done the West Ridge route before and was a far better rock climber, to expedite the climb he ended up leading all the pitches.
I remember we hiked up to Nada Lake on Friday evening. On Saturday, we completed the approach and did the climb. We camped Saturday night amongst the larch trees on the gentler slopes beneath the peak. Sunday was hike back to the trailhead and drive back to Seattle.
The weather was excellent, the scenery stunning and the climbing fun (despite the tenacious grip I have on the summit blocks in this photo).
This trip was the only climb I did with Karl. While writing this blog post, I searched Karl’s name on the Internet and see that he has had a distinguished career as a researcher in the UW Health Sciences Schools.
No comments:
Post a Comment