Yak Peak - Yak Check 6/28/2008
Trip: Yak Peak - Yak Check
Date: 6/28/2008
Trip Report: After making some last minute plans to do Yak, Reinhard picked me up in Agassiz at 6:00 on Friday Evening. We drove up highway #5 to the rest stop area below Yak Peak and hiked into the base of the climb. We set up a bivi right near the bottom of the route and hung out at camp then slept until 5:00 Saturday morning. We packed up and put our stuff we didn't need down near the trail where we would be coming back. We racked up and did the quick scramble to the base of the big dihedral that makes up the first three pitches of the route. As Dru points out in his "opinionated description' on Bivouac.com it is easier to go left and up to the base of Reality Check and traverse right to the base of Yak Crack to begin the climb. The first three pitches were all easy 5.6 up a cool crack just left of the dihedral. I led the first two pitches and Reinhard led the third up to lunch ledge. After lunch ledge the climbing starts getting a bit more serious with less protection and slightly trickier climbing and routefinding. I led up pitch 4 placing tiny gear behind small flakes and clipping a fixed pin near the top, pitch 5 was an easy 5.8 which involved getting over some overlaps then climbing crumbling flakes to a belay just left of some cool looking corners. Pitch 6 was evil, definitely the most serious pitch on the route. I started up by laybacking some really nice corners but then the rock starts getting crumbly and you have to pull some overlaps with 'oatmeal like' rock to the next belay. It didn't help that I had a lot of rope drag and needed a bathroom break. After pitch 6, however, the climbing became excellent again. Pitch 7 was my favourite, you get to layback underneath a flake, up the side, then back over the top before laybacking along a big flake and pulling over the top of the 'see through' flake and belaying. We walked over the top of the flake and then climbed a cool corner crack for a couple pitches and then I led the '5.10a' (read 5.9) face climb. It was fun but surprisingly easy, the only tricky moves are right near the second bolt and it is still pretty easy. The second '5.10a' pitch was barely more than a 5.8, but still fun. The last pitch was a fourth class scramble up the slab into the trees and top of the sub-summit. The descent is corniced snow at the moment so we rapped down near a gully on the right side of the east face and walked the snowy trail back to the base. I thought the route was excellent, the rock was good except for part of the 6th and maybe the end of the 5th pitch. The climbing was fun and pretty straight forward. The only bummer was that the 5.10 that I was stoked for was only 5.9- ... it was still lots of fun though! We took quite a long time on the route for a couple reasons, I led basically every pitch (except for pitch 3) so we didnt have the speed advantage of swinging leads and we just took it pretty slow as we got an early start.. a fast party could probably do it between 4-6 hours.. we took about 8 hours total. Dru's 'Opiniated description' on bivouac.com is a really good, detailed information source on the climb, bring it with you!
Approaching the mountain
Scrambling to the base of the route
The big dihedral, the route is over on the left, on the other side of the arete.
First three pitches
Reinhard at top of Pitch 3
My shadow, top of pitch 4
Looking up at pitch 5
Reinhard following pitch 4
At the top of Pitch 5
Me at the base of Pitch 6, im smiling because I have no idea what's waiting for me on Pitch 6
Me on pitch 6, still having fun at this point.
I didnt really get any pics on the upper section of the route unfortunately. But I got one pic.
Reinhard coming up pitch 11
The End
Gear Notes:Lots of small/finger size peices and a couple larger cams, one set of stoppers is more than enough for this route.
Approach Notes:Climbers trail form rest area.
