Jake Robinson

I climbed the West Ridge on 6/15. The route was in great shape, but as you can see in your photo, there's a big schrund near the top of the gully. We were able to tiptoe across the left side when it was frozen in the morning, but rapped over it in the afternoon. I'd say by now the gully is probably out. As we were descending into Boston Basin, one of those snow patches above the Cat Scratch gully dumped a bunch of snow on a party that was headed up that way. Glad everyone was ok... Rapping across the schrund in the afternoon:

Thanks for the detailed and honest report, I'm glad everything turned out ok for you guys! I was the skier you spoke with at the crater rim and I'm sorry if I understated the difficulty/time required of the traverse to the true summit, and if that contributed to your situation. We were also expecting some afternoon corn, at least down low, but instead got extremely icy survival skiing all the way back to the car. Not the best day for skiing...

I wish I had better pics - it is a very impressive feature from the BL area. If it wasn't for the 20 mile hike and bushwhacking required to get there, maybe there would be a route... Here's a springtime view from the north, but it doesn't look like much from this angle:

Is there a route on this thing? I think it's about 2000' tall. impressive in person, but a pain to get in there and probably pretty chossy... About 2000' of relief from lower Bannock Lake to the summit:

Did you find the register on Devore? Apparently it's the original FA register from 1940, and we were excited to add our names, but it was nowhere to be found (9/7/18).

Nice work. I climbed this last year and we took the same "overhanging lieback problem" that you did - it was indeed sporty!

Matt, what an awesome writeup! I like how you just connected the dots on the map and made it all go. For anyone wanting to avoid that horrible Swamp Creek 'schwack, it's really easy to access the Dark Glacier/Dark Peak from the west. All open forest and no brush with a little bit of scree and some class 3 getting onto the glacier.