Climb: Old Settler-Contact Zone & FA Black September
Date of Climb: 9/23/2006
Trip Report:
I like the Old Settler. It is a fun peak to climb and I have climbed there several times.
Jesse Mason (JMace), Paul Baker (PaulB) Jordan Peters (jordop) and I daytripped on Saturday and climbed two parallel routes. Jordan and Paul climbed the Contact Zone, which was put up by the BCMC back in the 1980s. I have never heard of a previous repeat ascent, and info was very hard to come by when Alpins Select was being written, so there is at least a slim possibility that this is the second ascent?
Climbing parallel routes on the same mountain is fun. You can bullshit back and forth across the intervening gullies, take cool pictures of each other, and no worries about death blocks from the party above squashing you like a bug like there would be if you climbed as 2 parties on the same route.
Scoping at the base
Jesse and I climbed the narrow buttress between Contact Zone and Duck L'orange. This was a line I had been eying and thinking about for a few years. It turned out to be an OK route with some good climbing and also some typical alpine situations like gullies, blank headwalls, runouts and giant loose boulders.
We met in Agassiz at 6:45, left the cars around 9:30, started cl;imbing around 11:30, topped out near sunset and descended the choss band of doom and the talus below by headlamp in additon to trudging out to the car. It was about 13.5 hours car to car but more like 20 hours bed to bed due to the slow logging road drive.
Jordan and Paul said they had a good time on Contact Zone. I will let them describe it.
Jmace and I named our route Black September. It ended up being 12 pitches although many were not full rope length due to convenient ledges, rope drag or other excuses.
The pitch by pitch description goes like this:
1) Climb first pitch of Duck L'orange to ledge below offwidth 35m 5.8
2) Traverse right and up layback flakes on edge of gully to another ledge 40m 5.8
3) Cross gully rightwards using convenient flake and traverse broken rock beyond rightwards to solid ledge 30m 5.7
4) Straight up leaning corner on orange rock and ledges above to good belay 40m 5.8. This ledge can be traversed to p3 or p4 of Contact Zone.
5) Up long slabby ledgy pitch with spaced gear 60m 5.7
6) Climb corners and face moves up and left to belay on arete below tower 35m 5.8
7) Cross arete and move left up slab and flakes to corner. Climb corner to chockstone belay below overhanging dihedral 30m 5.9
8) Layback, undercling and stem dihedral (crux) to exit move up and right. Continue in steep chimney above to left to notch on arete and belay. 25m 5.10a
9) Climb poorly protected slab left of arete crest to steep corners regaining crest of arete 45m 5.9
10) Climb low-angle knife edge arete with easy climbing but no pro 50m 5.6
11) Finish arete to base of steep blank headwall. Avoid headwall via wet, runout gully on left. Simulclimb so that leader can reach nice ledge high on left gully wall 80m 5.7
12) Traverse ledges on left gully wall to giant chockstone. Low angle OW/squeeze chim on left side of chockstone leads to easy talus 40m 5.8
Climb 30m of 4th class to summit ridge. Descend to notch between Central and North Peak. Downclimb dirt ramps as per Scrambles Guide route to talus below. Follow talus to lake. 420 Bushwack out to road and hike back to car and cold beer waiting in creek
Jesse p1
Looking across at Jordan on Contact Zone
Jesse leading p4
Jesse seconding p5
Jesse in the p11 gully near dark
Downclimbing just after sunset
View over the lake to Chehalis and Judge
Gear Notes:
Lots of small wires. Few larger wires needed.
Cams to #3 Camalot. Double yellow, blue TCU nice. Double red camalot size nice.
5 Tricams 0.5-2.5
No pins.
Twin 60ms used but could get away with single rope since descent is walkoff (no raps)
Approach Notes:
1h 30m car to lake
1h lake to base of route
7 hrs on climb
4 hours from summit back to cars (faster if all party members remember headlamps )
East Harrison FSR is a slow and bumpy 2wd ride
Ignore foresters in head office who say road is not gated. Guy in camp will have locked gate anyways. You will need to sweet talk him to get key no matter what office staff told you.
Do you not think you should use a bit of human beat box? Then people could really chill.