Challenge of the North Cascades by Fred Beckey

Author:Fred Beckey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Published: 1996-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

On the first ascent of the Spider’s Web route on Midnight Rock, where autumn dyes the canyon slopes with red and gold. Photo by Bob Sprenger.

10

The Canyon of Granite

Driving over Stevens Pass one cannot help notice how sharply the Cascades separate two climatic zones. From misty, luxuriously-green hills and white-water streams pouring through dank, mossy canyons, in the space of a few miles the forests thin, the air clears, and rolling hills with their lighter-barked pines stand out against the blue sky.

It is apparent, too, that snow vanishes more rapidly on the drier east side, allowing an earlier spring. This is largely due to the downslope wind, the “chinook” (called “foehn” in the Alps), which literally eats snow. Many Northwest residents regard any warm rainy southwest wind as a chinook, but a true foehn requires ascent, cooling, and precipitation on the moist side of a range and a corresponding drying and warming action on the lee. This adiabatic cooling forces the bulk of the precipitation to fall on the west-side slopes, and often in winter destructive slides occur. In 1910 two great avalanches demolished a mail and passenger train stalled outside the snowshed west of Stevens Pass, killing 118 persons. On the east side, where there are dangerous gulches, the mountainsides have less snowcover and are generally safer.

About 30 miles east of the pass, between Tumwater Mountain and Icicle Ridge, flanked by sand hills forming a natural channel for air currents, the highway enters Tumwater (“rough water” in Chinook jargon) Canyon, a shadowed chasm carved by the Wenatchee River, its granitic flanks dotted with a sparse growth of pines. Autumn dyes the cliffy parapets with brilliant red and gold flames of vine maple. Spring brings to bloom clusters of rock lily. Spring, too, brings the Wenatchee to a boiling, roaring torrent—an unforgettable sight of devastating power—and bejewels the rocky walls with dozens of small streamlets. Drury Falls can be seen tumbling a thin spray hundreds of feet from a vertical canyon rim. Water is the theme of the Canyon and the land beyond; the precious fluid is piped and channeled to irrigation ditches near Leavenworth. Once a railroad construction camp, this town marks the beginning of the famous Wenatchee apple region, where nearly every square foot of tenable valley land is claimed by orchard.

The opportunity for adventure on rock is practically limitless in the profusion of granite cliffs within Tumwater Canyon and on the numerous formations of solid sandstone in valleys to the east. The mountainous background makes practice climbing more appealing than on outcrops in Puget Sound lowlands. In spring the region provides a fine training ground for summits still snowbound, and the generally sunny climate of the rain-shadow often provides an escape from dreary, west-side wetness. It is a natural place to learn the arts of rock climbing, to tune nerves and fingertips, to restore confidence, to re-educate the mind in how to concentrate and thus ignore the latent menace of the void. In these rock sanctuaries even the charm of natural beauty may be lost on the enterprising climber.

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