Wigwam Dome
Trail of Tears 5.8
Rain was forecasted for the day but Laura and I figured we'd at least go take a look at a climb we have wanted to do for a while now. Knowing that it was well within our ability, we set off to race the rain. I loaded up the packs with a set of cams #.2-3 and doubles in #.5-2 along with slings, 1/2 set of stoppers and a 70 meter rope. The rack was plenty and I only used the #3 one time at a belay. Wigwam Dome is about 2 miles (1.4 to the turnoff) from the Wigwam Creek Trailhead in the Lost Creek Wilderness and holds a mix of excellent granite crack and slab climbs. 
Trail of Tears is a 5 pitch climb. Pitch 1 is an easy 5.6 traverse with sparse protection that leads to a belay below a long right facing dihedral that you follow most of the way up the dome. The route description says to traverse to some cracks on your right at the top of pitch 3 rather than climbing the dihedral to its end but I did 2 pitches of climbing the dihedral without traversing over to the cracks on the right and felt the climbing was still 5.8+ and was a far better option than traversing the run out slab. As i was climbing the final 30 feet of the dihedral the thunder started and I knew we better hurry. we had two pitches left to climb and bailing would not have been easy as there are no bolted anchors on this climb. Laura raced up to meet me at the belay and I quickly set off on the very nice finger crack variation to my left. I took this all the way up to a nice cave and set another belay. As the sprinkles started, I climbed the 15 feet of 5.8 slab on the last pitch and then climbed as fast as I could to the summit of the dome. At the summit I ran around a large boulder to use the rope as a belay and screamed to Laura to begin climbing. As she climbed the final 100' the skies opened up on us. When she reached the top we took shelter under trees and packed our gear. The 5 pitches took us 1.5 hours and we are lucky to have moved at a fast pace today. It rained on us most of the way while we hiked off of the dome back to Laura's backpack at the base of the route. when we arrived, the entire route was a waterfall! We knew we had lucked out today as we snapped a few photos and made the short 2 mile hike back to the trailhead!
Trail of Tears is a 5 pitch climb. Pitch 1 is an easy 5.6 traverse with sparse protection that leads to a belay below a long right facing dihedral that you follow most of the way up the dome. The route description says to traverse to some cracks on your right at the top of pitch 3 rather than climbing the dihedral to its end but I did 2 pitches of climbing the dihedral without traversing over to the cracks on the right and felt the climbing was still 5.8+ and was a far better option than traversing the run out slab. As i was climbing the final 30 feet of the dihedral the thunder started and I knew we better hurry. we had two pitches left to climb and bailing would not have been easy as there are no bolted anchors on this climb. Laura raced up to meet me at the belay and I quickly set off on the very nice finger crack variation to my left. I took this all the way up to a nice cave and set another belay. As the sprinkles started, I climbed the 15 feet of 5.8 slab on the last pitch and then climbed as fast as I could to the summit of the dome. At the summit I ran around a large boulder to use the rope as a belay and screamed to Laura to begin climbing. As she climbed the final 100' the skies opened up on us. When she reached the top we took shelter under trees and packed our gear. The 5 pitches took us 1.5 hours and we are lucky to have moved at a fast pace today. It rained on us most of the way while we hiked off of the dome back to Laura's backpack at the base of the route. when we arrived, the entire route was a waterfall! We knew we had lucked out today as we snapped a few photos and made the short 2 mile hike back to the trailhead!
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