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Date |
Ascent Time |
Descent Time |
| 1st Time |
09 Oct 04 |
6:20 |
4:09 |
I forgot my camera, so these pictures belong to Blair.
We were going to do some rock climbing above Alderson Lake, then scramble up Bertha Peak, but as we pulled
into the parking lot, we looked at the outlier on Richards, and it appeared that we might find some easy 5th
class rock on the way to the summit. So, we changed plans and went to Bertha Lake, then up Richards.
This picture shows the outliner, which is actually quite a way from the true summit. We went up the right
skyline ridge (more or less). We probably should have went up the left skyline ridge because our route
was just moderate scrambling.
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This is taken from the west facing scree slopes of Richards Ridge. Bertha Lake is below.
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Initially the route is pure scree, but then it turns into a little bit of scrambling up piles of choss.
Here we see myself and Lisa steadily heading up the slopes.
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Here is Lisa scrambling up with Bertha Lake in the background.
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This is that Dave guy slowing making his way up the west face to the north ridge.
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Lisa and I making our way up the slope with Bertha Lake below us.
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Once we realised the summit was a long way from the outlier seen from the townsite,
we started sidesloping our way up to the north ridge. This is me and Lisa working our way across
the slopes.
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Typical terrain on the upper slopes leading to the north ridge.
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On this trip, I was wearing my technical approach shoes which suck for sidesloping scree, so I was trying
to stick more to the rock. Here I am trying to figure out where to go next.
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Once you gain the ridge, the ridge becomes problematic. We were looking to stay in the 5.5/5.6 area, and the ridge
would have been more than that. Given the wet rock, we dropped down on the left of the ridge and kept circling around
until we reach the summit. The summit can't be seen in this picture, but it's behind both of the highpoints shown in
this photo.
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This is Lisa walking along the north ridge before we dropped down on the SE slopes.
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Here we see myself and Lisa at a cairn along the way. Personally, I think some hiker didn't want to go on to the
summit (because it gets much more difficult after this point), so they built a cairn and called it quits.
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Here are Lisa and I at the true summit. The weather really sucked by then. After this point, Blair's camera fogged up
from the moisture. That means no cool pictures of the cable traverse on the hike out.
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