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Date |
Ascent Time |
Descent Time |
| 1st Time |
16 Aug 01 |
incomplete |
incomplete |
After a quick bushwhack from the truck, we gain the ridge, which reveals the long ridge ahead of us. It's all
scrambling to reach the first (left) grey highpoint. After that, it's all simulclimbing until you end up on the snow.
Even once on the snow, I'd still keep the rope on until you reach the summit.
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We took our first break on top of the red highpoint about 15 minutes in front of me.
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This is Blair on top of that red highpoint. After the highpoint, you'll want to watch for a gully on the left that will
take you down 30ft to a ledge system. If you continue on the ridge, you'll end up in a short rappel. We made this mistake
going toward the summit, but found the ledge system on the way back.
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After that first summit, the scrambling becomes a bit more exposed. Here I am trying to figure out how Blair went up
these scree-covered slabs. Eventually, I just sucked it up and went for it.
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Here I am traversing just below the ridge. After about 10 ft in front of me, I regained the ridge.
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Once I regained the ridge, I had excellent views of Golden and the Lower Blaeberry. The switchback logging road is
the first turn-off from the Blaeberry (I forget the name). We drove up the second turn-off (Mather Main).
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More exposed scrambling on the north side of the ridge.
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And a whole bunch of traversing. Often, the traversing is exposed. You can also see in this picture that
the summit is getting closer and closer. Unfortunately, time keeps on ticking by.
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Some of the flatter sections only involved hiking. You can also see the lower ridge behind me.
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Alright, I admit it... it wasn't the most solid rock, but it was still fun scrambling.
Of course, after 12 hours of it, you tend to get tired of this stuff.
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Finally, we reached the first major grey highpoint see in the first picture. It even had a summit cairn on it.
I wonder how many people stop at this point and call it a success.
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You can't call it a success when this is still in front of you. Nonetheless, we're getting closer to the snow and closer
to the summit. This is also where we roped up and simulclimbed the rest of the way.
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This is me coming down off that false summit. The scrambling gets a lot more serious at this point.
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... and a lot more exposed.
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After that false summit, we had a tendency to stay on the south side of the ridge and traverse on small
ledges like the one between Blair and the camera. Also, where Blair is standing, is where we had to rap down about 30m.
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Here I am traversing along that small ledge. You wouldn't want to fall here.
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This is looking back at where we rappelled from (top-center of picture). If you look closely, you can see me at
the bottom of the 30m rap. From there, we traversed over to a main snow gully, then regained the ridge proper.
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This is looking back over typical terrain we had to ensure.
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There was some easy 5.4 climbing, and this would be the crux. You see, it's not so bad.
This is Blair leading up the crux.
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More 5.2 scrambling.
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This is looking back down the SE Ridge at all of the ground we had covered.
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This is Blair catching up to me.
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As we started out on the snow field, it was already pretty late. We had 600ft to go in order to reach the summit,
but we were already wondering about the looming darkness. Not wanting to risk being stuck in the technical scrambling
overnight, we turned around. It was a decision that is still bothering me today. As it was, when we arrived at the truck,
we had 30-45 mins of remaining daylight. Hmmm.
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So, we turned around. Lots of downclimbing. We only managed one rap, and the rest was a simul-downclimb.
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This is the only rap on return.
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A depressing look back at what could have been.
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Still depressing.
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