The River Wall

Yesterday my friends Dom and Laura and myself took a trip out to a little known crag in a small town named Eatonville. Our mutual friend Jeremy had been before and said it was worth checking out, a small sport crag with a dozen routes or so all between 5.7 and 5.10b/c. The weather was amazing so we decided to head out to Eatonville and see what we could find. About an hour later, after driving past several nice little farms with a great view of Mt. Rainier in the background, we arrived at the cozy little hamlet that is Eatonville. We followed the directions our friend had given us and after a bit of walking we arrived at the train tracks that marked the 'climbers trail' to the crag. This is the first wall we came to:




Unfortunately it was guarded by a fast moving river too wide to jump and too deep to cross, and the only route we spotted looked good, but the first bolt was about 20 feet off the deck, yikes! It was a rather odd place to find bolts but we convinced ourselves that this must be the place. A little bummed we hung out below the bridge before we gathered our things and headed back up.



Instead of giving up we wandered a little further down the tracks before finding another steep trail that ended up taking us to a cool little wall peppered with bolts. At last we found the treasure. Mounted on a flat rocky outcrop this little wall started at about 15 feet at the left and grew to be at it's tallest around 35-40 feet ending in the water. The routes were fun, a little dirty and chipped in some places, but climbable and the grades were between 5.7-5.10b. The rock was a wierd mixture of things that resembled sandstone but was definitely not, more like a basalt type of stone. It offered up several little edges and lay-backs and we had a great time climbing as many of the routes that we could get too, enjoying the weather and the river at our backs.


Laura on the first route of the day, a very dirty .10b.


Laura starting a cool 5.10a.






Dom on the last route of the day, a sweet 5.7.