Got a pretty late start (10:30ish) at the PCT trailhead because I was on dad duty this morning and neither of us were feeling an early start anyway. Luckily temps were still reasonable enough for a good burn, and trail conditions were actually nice and packed down after a day or two of rain.
Our intention was to for sure go for the RT time - we knew it would be pretty easily attainable - and see how we felt on the way up for the ascent. I’d done Washington once before, but Tyler had never done it, so we felt we’d be happy with just the RT time worst case.
The first couple of miles were uneventful until the turnoff to the climber’s trail when Tyler hit his leg pretty hard on some obscured deadfall. After taking a bit of time to stop and assess he said he felt ok and we took our poles out and charged up. We were definitely pushing decently hard on the way up, chatting occasionally here and there, but mostly just grinding up.
When we gained the ridge and got the first view of Washington I remember thinking we were on track to beat the ascent, but honestly don’t remember what our time was at that point. We made our way along the ridge deliberately avoiding getting suckered up into the ascent gully too soon.
In the end this was probably my only major route finding blunder of the morning because I led us too far and low off the ridge, forcing us to crawl up 200ish feet of very loose scree to the base of the scramble.
The scramble went fast and was honestly the most fun part of the day. It’s such a fun little scramble and the rock is surprisingly solid. Highly recommend it!
We topped out at 01:15:40ish. I brought out my phone to snap a picture of my watch but the sweat moisture on my screen wouldn’t let me click to take a picture, so I had to wipe it off and try again costing us conservatively 10 seconds. I was able to snap a kind of blurry pic at 01:15:57.
We hung out on the summit for a few minutes and chatted/admired the view, very stoked we’d gotten the ascent. We knew we were going to get RT so we didn’t feel much urgency to go down or rush.
We took our time heading down and gingerly made our way down the scramble. After pushing on the up it felt nice to just enjoy our position and be able to chat and relax a bit on the way down.
After grabbing our poles we made our way back down the ridge, still pretty casually and conversationally, but definitely picking up the pace especially close to the PCT.
At the junction we stopped so I could get a rock out of my shoe and tie my other, and then Tyler brought us down to sub 7s for the last few miles to the finish.
Highly recommend this route to anyone who wants an excellent run & scramble. The scramble is basically one move of 5th class and the rest is 3rd/4th on surprisingly solid rock as long as you stay on route. There’s plenty of bright rap tat from anchors on the route to help guide the way too.
The ascent could go faster still for sure. I brought a little under 1.5Ls of water up because I didn’t want to cramp on the way down, but if I just wanted to optimize for ascent speed I’d probably leave it behind to shed weight. My route finding blunder near the scramble also probably cost us a minute or two.
This made for an excellent morning out. Also very have a buddy to do this sort of thing with - way more fun than doing it solo!