Climb: Inspiration Peak-South Face

Date of Climb: 8/10/2005

Trip Report:

Inspiration Peak (highest pictured) with lightning-bolt "Gash" up South Face

Last week Jeff and I hiked up to Terror Basin and climbed the SF of Inspiration Peak.

We left the TH ~10am with packs heavier than I wanted. Heavy ice axe and rock shoes added since I just realized my sticky rubber approach shoes were losing their souls.

The four miles on the overgrown road is easy and a perfect grade. The trail up the forest was really difficult for some reason (steep! with a big pack). We surfaced from the trees and saw Terror Basin waaaaaaay over there. Sheesh, we gotta long way to go still. Once the steepness was over though, the hike was quite pleasant, well, except for the nasty "400 foot gulley" after the notch.

The approach the next morning went fairly well. Rolling alpine terrain over domes and meadows then the Terror Glacier. We went straight up through the heart of it, climbing up through crevasses and such. Sorta scary, but quick!


below the difficulties



up through the glacier

After an end run around a couple huge crevasses we found a tongue of snow that dropped us onto the rock.

We'd heard that one can rap right back to the packs, so we left most of our stuff there and started climbing. The first pitch or two were harder than we'd anticipated (not "scrambling") but after the initial wall we got to the scrambling and a big ramp angling up across the lower face.

We simuled up the blinding white ramp adorned with many nice flowers and quite the exposure until the base of the "Gash", a chimney angling back left up the steep face.

We pitched out the Gash in three pitches. Interesting climbing, flaky crumbly shale-like rock on the right, bomber featured granite on the left. On my pitch I got one especially nice chimney that was between a huge granite chockstone and the granite side (thus nice rock on both sides of me).


looking down from inside the "Gash"

Most of our climb was undertaken under a cloud of dread. We passed no rap slings so weren't really too sure how we were going to find our way back to our packs (and boots, axes and crampons). We had only one (60m) rope.

Raps down the West Ridge went well. Someone with gray slingage did us right. We came to a very steep rap over the South Face. We crossed our fingers and headed down. We needed to set up only one rap station ourselves on the steep wall, and then were back to prebuilt rap stations.

We rapped onto the glacier a different way than we came up (down the W facing wall). It looks like a great way to start the climb. One long 60m lead up featured, fairly easy granite would get you to the ledge (and the moat crossing appeared fairly easy too).

From above we had scoped a crevasse-free route back to terra-firma, which we now took back with no problems.

Problems came as we descended back down into Terror Basin and the fog rose up to meet us. Those open alpslopes with intervening domes are a lot harder to navigate with limited visibility! We wandered about for a couple hours, then it got dark which further limited our vis. Using a compass and altimeter we finally found a creek that we crossed right before our camp, and finally located our bivy ~ 10pm.

I pulled out the margarita fixins from food bag and the glacier snow I'd carred back from the climb and fixed myself a big ol' TERRROR MARGARITA, served in a pre-used cup o'noodles container. Best drink I've had in a long time.



Gear Notes:
one 60m rope
fairly large rack (doubles of .75-2 camalot)
crampons
ice axe

Approach Notes:
nice trail the whole way through the forest (does not get lost as Kearney indicates).

Nice job Chuck!

Nice work! Do have a photo you could annotate of your path up through the Inspiration Glacier.

Basically, to get off of the glacier, we traversed almost level from the SW buttress to the West. There was a path between parallel crevasses.

I got some glacier pics, but I don't think I took any of it from up above. But maybe can trace it from some of the long-view photos. I'll check when I get home (and post 'em if I do).

A photo of the glacier edge. I think the ramp at left has a good chance of going...? Or so it did last year.

Nope, that section of the glacier is completely unpassable as of yesterday. I think Chuck means go all the way around left of this photo avoiding the icefall.

Oh ok, so you went a different way? I know there was a fairly easy ramp right around there. I want to say we came right down here:

Ok here is Ducknut's photo taken from W. McMillan last year. We are in the red circle.

That way is completely broken up now. In your first photo, the way through should be just left of the left edge.

dang. I weep for the glaciers.

Here is the promised pic. I also edited in some glacier pics to the trip report. I don't think that bridge that Justin pointed out is there anymore. More like a big hole of bare rock there.

Nice! Get any pitchers of climbing the gash?

Thanks for the fine picture and story. Way to go!

Not many pictures from the actual rockclimbing. Tough to take a lot of pictures when you're filled with dread .

Here's the only picture I took in the Gash. It's a pretty tough picture to figure out what's going on. It's looking down the good part of the chimney I mentioned in the report. That's the glacier in the background (not the sky).

Chuck or anyone else:
I've been up there twice, but never tried to get through the glacier to Inspiration. Chuck: Do you think your long end run exit strategy would work now, three weeks after your trip? I'd like to try Inspiration in two days. Would be nice to have three, but two would work if we were efficient.

Thanks for the beta. Sooner the better.

John Sharp

Take crampons and ice axes, it's likely to be icy up there. I would not be surprised if you had to get creative.

Such a fun climb. Cool picture Chuck. Here's a picture of Ross going UP the lower part of the same Chimney.

The McMillan Spires are to the right of the picture. The highest peak in the photo (at least by appearance) is Inspiration. To the left is Pyramid and at the far left is Degenhardt. On the other side of the notch between those two is the DEGENHARDT GLACIER. Yeah.

wow, what a beautiful set of mountains. I'm adding this location to my "to do" list for this summer. I just ordered the Beckey guides, are these in them?

Is a frog's ass Catholic?

Ha! Thanks.