It’s a rare treat when three friends are all psyched for a multipitch day—and even rarer when the route options are stacked and side-by-side. Especially when Morgan decides she’s ready to swing leads. Last Saturday, the stars aligned: Morgan, Jaimi, Jaimi’s new-to-the-scene man-friend Spoons, and I paired off to tackle twin five-pitch sport routes up Spouse Wall, deep in the Middle Fork Snoqualmie Valley.

The mission unofficially kicked off the day before. I got a text from my friend Ben: a casual Friday afternoon hit to a new-to-me crag with a lineup of bolted multipitch climbs, all sub-5.10. I debated whether six days straight on rock and plastic was wise, but the offer was too good to pass up—and it doubled as a scouting trip for the still-loosely-planned group outing the next day. In short: the climbing was solid, the temps were too high, the company unbeatable, and the views rivaled the lower Sierra. Note to self: rappelling low-angle slabs still sucks.

We rallied in the living room at 7:30 a.m. and were rolling by 7:45, eager to beat the midday heat. An hour later, we were stacked into Jaimi’s Subaru, weaving through old-growth forests and breezing past a half-mile of cars parked for Seattle’s favorite sufferfest hike.

I've been waiting for a couple weeks to do a hands-on anchors and workshop with Morgan. Last week, I finally acquired a couple extra hangers and chains to set up a true-to-form two-bolt anchor station and I wrote up the corresponding curriculum to cover the range of single- and multi-pitch anchors one may encounter. Instead, she decided the car ride to the wall was the best time to cover these topics—using just a notebook and pencil. On occasion, I'd catch bits and pieces of a very similar conversation taking place between Spoons and Jaimi in the front seat. We had time to cover the most common two-bolt anchor setups you'd come across climbing in the West, how to set up a quad anchor on all of them, how to belay from above as a leader, and how to clean the quad in a sport-climbing context. Plenty to build on later.

We parked at the Garfield Ledges trailhead and hiked twenty minutes uphill to the base of Aspergillus and Fusarium, two 5.8 five-pitch romps.

Ben and I had climbed Aspergillus the day before, so this time Morgan and I queued up for Fusarium while Jaimi and Spoons headed up the adjacent line. Once the party ahead cleared the belay bolts, we clipped in and started up.

I climbed with my camera mounted on my pack’s shoulder strap, which made even moderate cruxes feel extra spicy. But I managed to catch some great shots of my friends mid-route.

As promised, P1 was dirty and vegetated, punctuated by a patch of yellow wildflowers. I think Morgan was fonder of the garden features than I was.

At the first belay, after a little back-and-forth with Spoons and Jaimi, we decided that half an hour of theoretical discussion had been enough for Morgan to feel confident taking the sharp end for the second pitch! I would have been more apprehensive, but I knew Morgan saying she was confident meant that she would be dialed. And we were sharing an anchor with the climb to the left, so she'd get a little supervision for the complex bits, just in case.

My worries were unfounded. After a quick lead to the next anchors, I felt the rope come tight and before I knew it, I was cloved in to the next anchor.

The climbing itself? Like many bolted multipitches: a bit repetitive and not particularly inspiring. But the company and the alpine views were the real reward. Morgan and I swapped leads up the remaining pitches, cruising through mellow slab cruxes and regrouping at the summit with Jaimi and Spoons.

We chatted a little bit, enjoyed some snacks, took in the views, then bushwacked back to the main hikers trail for a quick descent back to the car.

The hike out featured the usual post-crag rituals: salmonberry foraging, weird tree poses, and inspecting the mysterious bubble nests wriggling with tiny creatures.

With the crux of our day down, the rest was fun and games. We wrapped up the day with a dip in the swimming hole and headed back to Settle for a delicious bowl of poke at 45th Stop and Shop in Wallingford before returning home for a well-deserved nap.