McHenry’s Peak, The Kidnapper Van. In the Glacier Gorge cirque, Justin Dubois and I climbed a new free route on an unclimbed tower on the North Ridge of McHenry’s Peak. Our route followed a fairly direct line of discontinuous cracks and corners on the east face of this “Shameless Tower” (the lower, or eastern, of two obvious pillars on the north ridge). The best way to find the start is to locate a large worm-shaped pillar at the start of pitch two. Start below and right of this pillar on a ledge 20' below a right-facing corner with a left-angling splitter on its right wall. A bit of 5th class gets you to this ledge, angling in from the right. The second pitch climbs the left side of the worm pillar and the splitter hand crack above it. The final, crux, pitch climbs an obvious dark, right-facing dihedral to the tower’s summit. This pitch is 190' long and features sustained jamming and stemming. The Kidnapper Van (730', III 5.11+) was climbed on August 4, in four long pitches: 5.9, 5.10, 5.10+/11-, 5.11+.

Jason Seaver