Elevation Gain: 2,109m
Distance: 41km
Total Time: 12 hours 24 minutes
Date: October 12th, 2024
Golden Horn and Tower Mountain are an iconic duo of striking pointed summits visible from nearly everywhere around Washington Pass. I’ve seen them for virtually every summit I’ve climbed in the area and had always thought about a trip to get to the top of them. It wasn’t until Alex proposed them for an upcoming larch madness long weekend that I was finally convinced to go for them. Both summits are located quite deep into the range and if they were located in BC, would be a serious mission. However, this is Washington. The Pacific Crest Trail runs within a few kilometers of each summit, making a single day push quite feasible and I dare say, enjoyable.
After a successful mission up the West Face of North Early Winter Spire we were now planning on Golden Horn and Tower Mountain the following day. Thanks to a speedy ascent up NEWS, we were able to get a full night of rest and the 5am wake up hardly felt like a chore. We drove from our pull out to the trail head where a tsunami of vehicles were piling into the pass. Thanks to our early start we managed to find a reasonably close spot next to the trail head parking lot, but even an hour later it would surely have resulted in a size-able add on to our approach.
We started up the trail in the dark, but by the time we started exiting out of the forest first light was starting to hit the nearby peaks. As we climbed out into the alpine, the golden larches came to life under the rising sun. Nearby summits began to glow orange creating a picturesque expanse as far as the eyes could see. It’s one of those, you just had to be there, type of moments.
Now on the ridge line, we followed the cruise-y pacific crest trail around to the start of the descent into Granite Pass. I had to pause here to address some nagging knee pain, but thankfully Alex had come prepared with an assortment of remedies. After our break, we descended into the pass and made a fast pace towards Snowy Lake. Once we reached the turn off for the lake we had an easy hike up and away from the PCT and into a beautiful alpine basin. We took a break at one of the upper lakes and then started the push up to the ridge of Golden Horn.
The terrain was a mix of scree, sand and forest and we just put our heads down and pushed our way up at a consistent pace. Before we knew it we had reached the ridge and now had views of the imposing east face falling far into the valley below. Nonetheless, there’s a mostly 2nd class route up this thing, so there was bound to be an easy way up around the back. We scrambled further along the ridge and bypassed all of the difficult terrain around the south side and found an easy gully on the west aspect.
Above us were two summit pinnacles. It wasn’t clear which was the true summit. I went climber’s right to scope out one pinnacle, while Alex went out left. Alex located the correct summit, so I scrambled over to him and up another short gully. Now above us was a very small section of 4th or 5th class climbing. Alex made a small exposed move out on the ledge and then pulled himself onto the summit. I joined next and found the moves not all hard, but likely in the 5th class realm.
Across from us was the secondary pinnacle. It looked very very similar in height. I did a quick eye level test from our summit and it appeared we were in fact on the true one. We found it interesting that the reports we had read never mentioned this secondary pinnacle. With that confirmation out of the way, we spent some time enjoying the summit. Nearby Mount Hardy had a commanding north face and off in the distance the bulky summit of Robinson also beckoned our attention. The rugged nature of Washington Pass draws the eyes in every direction.
Tower Mountain was just across the way and we now turned our attention to getting their next. We had brought a 30m rad line and light weight kit to rappel the summit and so we got to work getting down. I started by inspecting the anchor, but found old webbing and cord so we opted to replace it. After a few minutes of slicing and dicing we had a solid anchor and rappelled off without issue. This was my first rappel purely on a rad line, so I was curious to see how the friction would be. I had practiced doing mini rappels on my rad line at home with dozens of configurations to find what worked best. In the end a munter with an auto block for a third hand worked perfectly.
After the rappel, Alex and I scrambled back down to the ridge and made the descent down to a bench at around 2200m. Our plan was to take this bench all the way to the start of the cave traverse for Tower Mountain. Many reports had gone all the way down to the lake and then back up but neither one of us wanted to sacrifice those 200m. Once at the bench it’s time to traverse to Tower!