My Trip Info: Ascent: 5848ft (1782m)
Distance: 23.4mi (37.6km)
Group Size: 3
Day Count: 1
More stats... Mountain Info: Tower Mountain:
Elevation: 8445ft (2574m)
Prom: 2904ft (885m)

At the time of writing, it's been over half a year since I climbed Tower, so hopefully I can remember everything. After a failed ski gamble at Rainier, the same day we drove all the way from Rainier to Cutthroat Trailhead. We decided to go to Cutthroat TH instead of the normal Rainy Pass TH since camping at the trailhead isn't allowed at Rainy. The next day we hit the trail at about 8. The hike from the trailhead to the lake was quite unremarkable, but the views were great. There was no defined turnoff to the mountain, so we just turned off at a point by the lake. The traverse went by fast, and we soon found ourselfs on the scree field below the start of the climb. We headed up to the ridge just to the left of the cave and started traversing to the West Couloir. The cave was super cool and the highlight of the trip in my opinion. It's not often that you get to see caves in the North Cascades. Plus there were free hula-hoops inside! After checking out the cave, we walked the rest of the ridge to the base of the West Couloir. A group that was behind us caught up right when we made it to the base. They let me climb first, so I took the lead and climbed up a hundred or so vertical feet solo. My group got ahead of the other group and caught up to me. After a while of climbing, we hit a crux section. There was a class 5 move on unstable rock above a sizable drop. Me and one member of my group made it up after some time of contemplating. However, one member really didn't want to come up. They were okay with turning back, so we continued on without them. However, after climbing for a while, we heard our lost member call out to us. Turns out they didn't turn around after all. Apparently they had turned around, but then they saw a better route that bypassed the class 5 move and took that. We all met up again and continued climbing. The climb past the rock cairn above was quite exposed, but it was no more than class 4 and just a few minutes. We got our photos on the massive summit rock cairn and headed down. I'll let the photos tell the story of our descent.