Elevation Gain: 1,424m
Distance: 10.13km
Total Time: 14 hours 27 minutes
Date: July 7th, 2024
Burgundy Spire has been on my list to do almost since the first day I ventured into Washington Pass. My big draw to it is that it’s a steep and prominent granite spire by which the easiest route is still 5.8+. There are few summits around SWBC that necessitate climbing by the easiest route and so here’s always some appeal there. As I looked into the route more I discovered an ultra classic linkup called the Pasaino-Burgundy link up. It climbs Pasaino Pinnacle’s West Face at 5.9- and ties into the upper 5 pitches of Burgundy Spire North Face at 5.8+. Pasaino Pinnacle is itself more like a buttress than a real summit, but it’s hard to pass up the opportunity to add 8 extra pitches of clean climbing. The only problem at the time was that I simply didn’t have the skills to climb at. That would slowly change as time progressed, but then I never really made time for it. Those stars would finally align on the July 4th long weekend when Brayden I had made our way Washington Pass to try out a few of the classic routes. Sunday was our last day and up to that point Brayden had not been feeling well. On Saturday I finished up a 13 hour day no Cutthroat Peak and arrived back at camp to a more radiant and lively Brayden! We conferred for a bit and agreed the time to send Burgundy-Pasaino was Sunday. I was exhausted from Cutthroat, but it’s impossible to pass up one more climb like this, so that would be Monday’s problem.
We woke up at 5am and headed out almost immediately to the trail head. In prior days the trail head parking spot had been jammed full with cars. Our intent was to avoid a traffic jam on the wall, but when we pulled up no one was around. Perfect! We racked up, ate a quick breakfast and descended down the loose and steep climber’s trail directly off the high way. Now came a foreshortened march towards the Burgundy col and we were both feeling it. However, a cloud of mosquitoes kept us from ever resting too long. For the most part the trail was easy to follow to about 2200m and then we had to start hunting down the best way to reach Pasaino Pinnacle. We kept to a bench around 2260m and traversed across kitty litter covered slabs making a few precarious moves along the way. A cairn marked the way at the end of the traverse and we were now standing underneath pitch 1.
Brayden and I played rock paper scissors for the first pitch and he won, so he racked up and started the lead. As he dipped out of sight, I stopped hearing any radio contact and eventually my rope went tight. We had a contingency in place in case the radios didn’t work, so I waited a bit longer and then started up. Pitch 1 started off with a fun groove and slightly tricky move to exit and then onto easy terrain. I was swung into pitch 2 but it was just scrambling so I simply hauled the rope out to the start of pitch 3 and then Brayden gave me the pitch 3 lead as a consolation. Pitch 3 was a fun, but short 5.7 ring locks to hand crack which meandered out climber’s right and then back left along side some chockstones in a groove before topping out on a nice ledge.
Brayden now started up the 5.9- and crux pitch. A twin set of finger cracks followed up with some techy and awkward moves to exit a narrowing chimney above. Finally, a somewhat exposed traverse out to the base of the next pitch marked the end. I followed up without too much issue and now was having a good look at the pitch 4 options. There’s 3 listed on the topo. 5.9R far out right which looked dirty and unappealing, 5.8+ on funky loose blocks or a 5.8 layback. The layback looked the coolest, so that’s what I aimed for.
The first few moves weren’t all that hard, but the lower part of the route was not really protect-able. I continued out right and realized I was now linking into the alternative pitch, so I down climbed a bit and headed towards the supposed lay back. However, I found a bit of off-width, like one or two moves, into fist jams completely negated the need to layback anything. In fact, it climbed really fun in this style and this was also where I found my first trust worthy piece. Above this lay back section was easier 5.6ish terrain and I regained the ridge crest to belay Brayden up.
From here Brayden climbed a 5.4 hand crack and then various features along the ridge until cutting climber’s right to the base of twin hand cracks. The topo had marked this section as along running 5.7 hand crack but we thought we were off route because it only just matched the description. I lead this part without any issue and that took us to the final pitch and the supposed mental crux. A run out section of face climbing/slab. Brayden climbed up and found several pieces of protection, so I’m not sure where the run out is. He took us to the summit from there.
By the time we reached the summit the mosquitoes had finally chilled out. Which was great timing because I was boiling in my hoody. It was the only thing saving me from losing all my blood, but it was also stifling hot. We hung out for a but on Pasaino and started to work out the pitches for Burgundy. When it was time to get going we scrambled down to the Burgundy-Pasaino col and then up a series of sandy ledges until the terrain really steepened.
Now I took the lead and the correct route was not super obvious. The saving grace was that the lichen had been stripped anywhere that climbers frequented so we had a free heatmap of the wall. I had read going to far left or traversing too much had resulted in some bad falls, so I vowed to stick as close to a vertical line as I could. I pulled up through numerous hollow flakes and past fractured cracks, placing only one piece that I didn’t have confidence would hold a big fall. I then climbed up and right into a massive flake and pulled on fist jams and hand jams up and out to more narrow ledges. I located what I thought was the recommended belay ledge, but the protection was all garbage, so I climbed higher and up to two large blocks with a channel between them. Here I found a bomb proof crack system and setup an anchor. The trade off was an uncomfortable hanging belay, but I preferred that to anything below.
Brayden lead through the blocky channel and then into an awkward corner which lead to lay back flake before topping out 15m below the broadway ledge. I followed up and found this section to be the crux of the route despite pitch 1 being the supposed crux. We realized we had climbed too low, but it was out of concern of going up the 5.10a chimney option which turned out to be still a ways away. With that I climbed out left up a corner and then across a slab where the lack of lichen proved that we were far from the first to take this variation. That landed us onto the broadway ledge and so we scrambled all the way across the start of the next pitch after a quick snack break.
The next pitch was mostly low 5th climbing and Brayden cruised it with ease to the base of the next 5.8 pitch. I swung leads again and climbed through a pretty fun section of climbing and then up to an interesting finger crack with some great face moves. That took me to large ledge below the final off width section to the summit. As expected Brayden cruised it, but it didn’t really climb wide at all and one does not need to bother bringing a #5 for it as it tips out anyhow. We were finally on the summit now! We both took turns scrambling up the summit boulder and then rested for awhile.
This had been a big affair and we were both happy to have finished off the summit. However, there’s still the descent and we were both hoping to just magically teleport to the car at this point. Oh well, there’s a nice rap anchor right off the summit so we setup a 60m rappel with a tag line and headed for the intermediary bolted station. It ended up being cord directly on hangers, which is not my favourite but all looked good so we did a second rappel to the broadway ledge. We scrambled back to the climbing top out and then did three more full length rappels off the ledge to the base of the sandy ledges. Our ropes in no uncertain terms became intertwined into a singular unit of chaos on the last two rappels, adding some extra time to the descent. With that dilemma solved we scrambled to a slung horn whose safety depended on the angle at which you rappelled, but we made it work and followed up with one final rappel to the col.
That concluded an excellent day out as the only thing that’s left to do is march back to the car! Compared to Cutthroat Peak this route definitely deserves it’s classic status. It’s not overly sustained, but the climbing is fun and Pasaino in particular is super clean. The north face of Burgundy is not super easy to protect low down, but still climbs nicely and is worthwhile to get the summit.