Ares Tower and The Acropolis

Ares Tower and The Acropolis

On Ares Tower

May 10, 2025

Eric and Nick

Summit elevation 8,202.8ft +/-0.1ft (NAVD88)

Last summer the USGS published Lidar data for the remaining mountain regions of WA, and Kyle Bretherton discovered a few peaks that should technically qualify for the WA Top 200 list based on this new data. Peaks require at least 400ft of prominence to qualify, and Ares Tower exceeded that threshold based on the new data.

The route

This tower is a 4th class rock spire on the top of Vasiliki Ridge. The spire and ridge were both named by Fred Beckey, with the highest point referred to as Ares Tower in the Beckey guidebook. Many other climbers have climbed it this spring and it looked like a fun short-day objective with other fun spires nearby to bag.

The peaks

We drove up Saturday morning and parked at the standard Burgundy col trailhead off highway 20. I hadn’t done my homework sufficiently for snow conditions, and showed up with ski gear. The route is currently mostly melted out, so it would have made more sense to bring hiking boots and snow shoes. Rather than leave the skis in the car and risk them getting stolen (I’ve had this happen to me on highway 20 before), we decided to carry them into the woods and hide them.

Scrambling up

We dropped down to Early Winters Creek, with some snow coverage in the trees, and hid the skis next to the log crossing. We then followed the boot track through the snow to 4200ft, where it all melted out. I continued up in trail runners on the nice trail to about 6200ft where snow started again. There I switched to ski boots and we booted up to the base of the tower.

Nick soloed up a direct low-fifth varation on the west face and I followed a 4th class route to the notch north of the summit. We then both scrambled south along the ridge, around the west side of a big boulder, then up to the summit. The summit was wide enough to take a nice rest, but the very top was a sharp point. I’d brought my ultralight DA2 dGPS unit since I figured I might as well get a super accurate elevation for a WA Top 200 peak. I set it up next to the spire and used a tape measure to measure the distance up to the top of the spire.

Surveying gear ste up

We hung out admiring the view for 45 minutes, then rapped off the nice new anchor back to our stashed gear. We then continued hiking south to the Acropolis, which we scrambled up a fun 4th class ridge on the north side. From there we downclimbed a chasm, then scrambled to the nest tower south. This tower is officially unnamed and doesn’t appear in the Beckey guidebook, but I’ll refer to it as Acropolis south.

Rapping down

We first were confused and thought it was Charon, which was supposedly 3rd class. We soloed up some 4th class terrain covered in kitty litter then balked at soloing the last 5th class step to the summit. This was definitely not Charon. By then it appeared a storm was coming in, so we decided to just bag that tower anyways and call it a day. I carefully downclimbed back to our stashed packs to retrieve the rope, then Nick led up the short low-5th class step to the summit. We saw an old rap anchor up there and a cairn on top.

The Acropolis

We then rapped the route, then scrambled and scree surfed back to snow. I did not have the appropriate footware for the day (ski boots, stashed trail runners, and rock climbing shoes) and it would have been much preferred to just have hiking boots for the whole day. I hiked down the rock and scree in my climbing shoes to not damage my boots. Then I booted down the snow to my stashed trail runners and we hiked back to highway 20.

I processed my data and found the summit is at 8,202.8ft +/-0.1ft (NAVD88). Lidar under-measured the summit by 0.2ft, which is typical for sharp summits. But that’s not too bad for Lidar in this case. (I’ve seen Lidar data be off by up to 4ft in other instances).

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