Octoberfest Climbing Trip

Did you know you can not only fit a trad rack in an alaska airlines approved carry on, but TSA will let it pass through with no issue?

they didn’t even test my chalk bag for cocaine

Alex and I hit up the town of Leavenworth for some easy trad climbing before committing ourselves to go get some bigger projects in the Cascades. Leavenworth is also a Bavarian themed down and our trip coincided with the Oktoberfest event they were throwing in town. Since it was Oktoberfest we determined we could only go climbing if we wore lederhosens.

The pilot took us right over downtown for a great view out my window.

Unfortunately we didn’t climb a ton, our first climb we got stuck behind a couple that had a medical emergency and it took Alex and myself and another team of 2 to get the climbers down safely from about 300 feet off the deck. Alex and I grabbed a ton of the climbers’ gear and Alex climbed with it to the top. The entire incident took about 4 hours to coordinate to get them off the climb.

Fortunately the climbers with the emergency ended up fine and all 6 of us met up in the town of Leavenworth to give them their gear back and go get drunk. The climbers who needed assistance bought us all dinner which was nice, especially since I got some of their vomit on my rope which I still haven’t cleaned yet.

Anyways we slept in the back of Alex’s car on a crash pad and went hiking the next day before my flight out of town. Good impromptu quick trip to Seattle and back. Flights were like $100 round trip and even with eating out every meal I spent like $200 total. Good times and next year I’m looking forward to getting after some bigger climbs in the Cascades.

Alex is like 6’3’’ so I have to stand on a steep incline to look taller than him. There is a 400’ cliff to the left of the large boulder that we just climbed up.