The Burnout Rock Climbing

The Burnout is a surprisingly high quality sandstone crag located at the crest of the Chuckanut mountains. The cliff looks out over the Salish Sea, offering views of Rainier, the Olympic mountains, numerous islands, and the aesthetic farmlands of Skagit County. You can’t beat the view here. There is everything from 5.7 to 5.12 with a little something for everyone. Technical climbing is the name of the game up here. Bring your best footwork! Most routes are fully bolted with stainless Wave Bolt glue-ins, but there are a couple that require gear. The gear is good. The cliff faces south-southeast and can get quite hot making this mostly a spring, winter, and fall climbing area. That being said, climbing here can be good on all but the hottest days. There is often a nice breeze coming off the water in the summer keeping it cool. Being at the top of a ridge, the cliff experiences almost no seepage. Between this and its south facing nature it dries very quickly and can provide many high quality days of climbing during the winter. This is sandstone though. Please respect this porous rock and give AT LEAST 48 hours from the last rain before climbing.

When the cliff was originally spotted it was though it might make a nice little toprope crag, but after the first day of exploration it was clear this cliff was the most solid piece of Chuckanut sandstone any of the climbers had touched. Over the next few years, many long days were spent scrubbing moss, pulling blackberries, moving dirt, making trails, and gluing in bolts. Blood, sweat and tears have been poured into this passion project in the hopes of creating a high quality crag close to Bellingham. Enjoy.

Important note of maintenance:  Most of of the base of the cliff was a 4ft high hedge of trailing blackberry (the native, easier to deal with kind), thistle and nettles. We did our best to make nice the trails and belays, but it will take a community effort to keep it that way. "Everything is made up and the points don't matter," but points will be given to those who help keep the nice plants and pull the pokey ones.