| |
Date |
Ascent Time |
Descent Time |
| 1st Time |
28 May 05 |
Incomplete |
Incomplete |
| 2nd Time |
11 Jun 05 |
7:00 |
3:30 |
 28 May 05 -
This is Spread Eagle Mtn, which is the eastern outlier of Spionkop Ridge. Mt Yarrow is the left (southern) outlier
of Spread Eagle Mtn. The first half of Mt. Yarrow's east ridge is a hike, and the second half is mostly 5.5-5.6 alpine
rock climbing on horribly loose rock. The red dot marks where the technical climbing is.
|
 28 May 05 -
The trip starts by walking through some grassy slopes, which leads to some loose (not quite scree) slopes to gain the
lower ridge. This is Blair making his way up the loose rocky slopes to gain the ridge. Nothing difficult here, just
steep hiking.
|
 28 May 05 -
Once you gain the ridge, it's more hiking to the technical part of the East Ridge. There are lots of little false
summits here, and you're probably better to sideslope these hills and head directly for the true climbing. Otherwise,
you could add a couple hundred feet to your total elevation gain.
|
 28 May 05 -
Quickly, the hiking turns into difficult scrambling, and then into technical rock climbing. Here we see Blair picking
his way up through the scrambling section.
|
 28 May 05 -
Here is where the scrambling ends and the rock climbing begins.
|
 28 May 05 -
This is Blair on the first pitch, which runs at a very loose 5.3. We didn't bother with rock shoes on this pitch.
|
 28 May 05 -
More of the first pitch. The top of this first pitch goes through a v-shaped chimney just left of Blair's head,
in the center of the picture. It does not go through the larger chimney to the left of that.
|
 28 May 05 -
This is Blair starting the second pitch (30m 5.6), which ends on the top of that big rock outcropping above him.
Rope drag is really bad on this route, so our pitches were generally in the 30m range.
|
 28 May 05 -
This is me coming up the second pitch.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
This is the start of the third pitch, and arguably the crux of the route. On our first attempt, we got turned back
at this section. On the first attempt, Blair wanted to rate it at a 5.8, but after our successful second try, he put it
at an easy 5.6. I should note that you can walk-off the route at the base of this pitch by going left (south). You can
find a small gully in the back of the cirque, where you can downclimb about 200 ft, then traverse back to the scrambling
section of the ridge. This is the last spot you can walk off the route until you summit.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
Here I am relaxing in the sun, belaying Blair on the 3rd pitch (seen above).
|
 11 Jun 05 -
This is me, topping out of pitch 3. As you can see, it swings around to the right, just a little bit.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
Here we see Blair starting pitch 4, which was a pretty easy 5.4.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
Blair is standing at the base of Pitch 5. Is the only pitch that starts out on the left side of the right. The rock here is
incredibly nice and different from the rest of the route. It's that prickly limestone, and two weeks later, my hands still have
scars from cleaning cams and deeply placed nuts. To me, this pitch was the crux.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
We went right up the edge between the good rock and the bad rock. This is the middle of the pitch.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
This is the upper part of the 5th pitch, and if you look closely, you can see Blair looking over the edge. It's a little
bit of an overhang here.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
After pitch 5, we found ourselves on a large ledge, where we took a nice rest break and got out of our rock shoes. We
thought to scramble this section, but given the exposure, we decided to short rope for a while. We went up the little chimney
where the snow patch is, then turned right, and attacked the top slightly from the right.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
This is Blair about to top out. We really thought this was the summit. But then we topped over the edge where Blair is, and
you could hear the sound of disappointment. "Oh crap".
|
 11 Jun 05 -
This is what we found when we topped out. From this view, it looked like we might even need to put our rock shoes back on, but
we found a way up the right side of it that was pretty easy. You could also continue traversing around the right side of it to
the Spread Eagle Col, then hike up the west face of the summit block.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
From the summit, you can see how easy it would be to just walk down to the Col and summit Spread Eagle Mtn as well.
Unfortunately, storms were quickly approaching from the west, so we just wanted to get down.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
There wasn't a summit register, but we did find a plate of rock that had someone's name scratched on it from 1995. Blair
and I decided to quickly scratch our names. After I took the picture and started down, Blair added "East Ridge, Alpine
III 5.6". We don't think our route was a first ascent, but it definitely isn't the easy way up.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
Here I am standing at the summit.
|
 11 Jun 05 -
From the summit, you walk toward the col until you can start to pick your way down the north side of Yarrow. Although,
it requires a little bit of route finding, you can actually pick your way all the way down into this bowl. From there, you
will come across an animal trail that leads all the way out. The animal trail stays about 50 yards up hill from the
creek (on the south side of the creek). Be careful of rock fall on this slope. I was about 40m below Blair when he released
a 5ft cubic sized rock that came bouncing down my way. It missed me by about 20m, but you could still feel the ground
shake as it went by.
|
|
