Chimney Rock, Northern Idaho

Chimney Rock sits at the lower edge of the Selkirk range in Northern Idaho, visible from Mount Roothaan, a neighboring peak and popular scramble on the east side of Priest Lake. This prominent granite feature is an impressive TOWER, not a rock! It was first climbed in 1934 and then free soloed in 1935. During this outing, we decided to climb the standard route, which is rated somewhere in the vicinity of 5.3-5.5 depending on route finding. You can also make it significantly harder if you don't pay attention to your route selection. Anyway, the Standard Route seem appropriate considering we had a group of six, which we decided to climb in two groups of three.

Getting to Chimney Rock wasn't as easy as climbing it. We spent about 4 hours going from Sandpoint, Idaho to the trailhead, which should have been a 2 hour ordeal! Why? Simple--lack of a good map and a group with individuals each with Type A personality. When we finally arrived at the trailhead late Saturday afternoon, we wrestled over the decision of hiking in and camping or just starting out early Sunday morning and doing it car-to-car. The approach to the base of the climb was about two hours and after some thought, and bickering, we settled with the idea of camping at the trailhead parking lot and traveling light the next morning. The decision gave us a little bit of time to kill Saturday so a few of us biked/hiked in about 40 minutes to an overlook and the summit of Mount Roothaan for a peek at Chimney Rock. It was impressive! I rode my bike up the trail as much as I could -- fun, but very technical.

Left: Corinne trying to figure out directions.  Right: Emily sorts gear.

We started for Chimney Rock from the TH At 4:20am Sunday morning. In about two hours we found ourselves at the base of the rock looking for a place to start.  Like I said, we chose to climb the standard route.  We had two ropes: I lead with Michael and Corinne Trommsdorff on my rope and Emily and her two friends followed.

Basically, the Standard Route consists of four pitches, but as I was climbing, I linked the second and third pitch together to save time. Also, it was a pain to find a good anchor point and ledge to accommodate three climbers between the second and third pitch. This was a good decision because it took us nearly six hours to reach the top. Did I also mention that the weather pressured us a bit; it was about to rain.

Left: Michael Trommsdorff just below pitch #2.  Right: Michael, Corinne and I enjoying the view on pitch #2.

The climb was fun and very relaxing. Petr (yes, the spelling is correct!) was the least experienced of the group and this was his second climb and rappel ever. To break him in, we made him clean gear! As I was leading, I noticed a red Metolius TCU buried in a crack from a previous party. But it was sticking out enough so I clipped into it. Afterwards, I forgot to mention to Petr that it wasn't mine and he shouldn't bother retrieving it. Ooops! His reply was simply: "*!?*#&@*#$#!" He must have tried for about 10 minutes, which caused his knuckles to bleed, to no avail. Sorry, Petr!

By 2:30pm, we topped out and made our way back down to the trailhead by 4:30pm. A six hour drive that followed got us back into Seattle later that night, completely exhausted!

At the top of the Chimney.  The Selkirk Mountains are beautiful, aren't they?

Signing the summit register.

More Info
Chimney Rock is located in northern Idaho on the east side of Priest Lake. Check out the Priest Lake info page or go directly to the Mount Roothaan-Chimney Rock webpage which describes how to get to the trailhead.

Recommended Gear and Route Description
A medium size rack and a few Stoppers and nuts will work. I used up to a #2 BD Camalot. Bring a lot of slings. The rock is good and eats gear well, but watch out for those odd loose boulders! We climbed the standard route which is rated between 5.3-5.5, depending on your route finding abilities. If you choose this route and the climbing gets hard, slap yourself for going the wrong way. It's not difficult! The route starts about 40-50 feet to the right of an obvious chimney on the west face. For the first pitch, follow large flakes gently rising to the left. The first pitch ends at an ledge that can easily support 3 climbers. There's a small tree growing below this ledge. At one point, someone permanently jammed a cam with a red sling into a crack, otherwise no fixed anchors. Don't forget to tell your partner cleaning gear that the red cam isn't yours! Otherwise, you'll have to wait and hear about it later! From this ledge, climb up but move to the slightly left until you can see an easy way up. At first, I made the mistake of climbing directly above the ledge, which put me on a steeper and significantly more technical route. It was fun notwithstanding, but eventually I ended up below a small roof and had to down-climb back to the ledge and start all over. Basically, from the ledge climb up but to the left on/behind a flake, which again slopes to the left. Like I said, this is the tricky part because if you go straight up from the ledge, you might run along a flake which leads to more difficult climbing. Again, if the climbing becomes harder than what it is, slap yourself again and again for going the wrong way, and say out loud, "stupid, stupid, stupid". Coming up on the second belay station, you'll find that there's no good spot to park as your rope length runs dry. Some route beta I found said that the second belay isn't obvious. True. So instead, I bypassed it and continued to the fixed rappel anchors at the top of the third pitch. By this point, there was plenty of rope drag and I didn't have much to spare from the 60m rope we were using. This was a long 2nd pitch, but would saved us time because Emily was bringing up 2 others. Emily was using a 50m rope and made it to this point with some rope to spare. Just below the fixed anchors is the old rappel station -- rusty chains! The summit from here is just around the corner to the left and straight up some easy blocks. There are some slings around a rock on the summit to serve as an anchor and rappel station. To get down, rappel down to the large ledge next to the fixed anchors. From here, twin 60m ropes will get you all the way down the base of the climb, inline with the chimney. If you don't have two 60m ropes, there are fixed anchors evenly spaced totaling three to four rappels to the bottom. All rappel stations have been replaced with shiny new Fixe rappel anchors! Be careful not to snag your rope when cleaning, because it would suck to be you! Have fun and be safe.

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