Christopher Fisher Posted June 16 Posted June 16 (edited) Trip: Argonaut Peak - NW Arete Trip Date: 06/14/2025 Trip Report: Climbed the NW Arete of Argonaut over the weekend with a party of 4! Haven’t seen any trip reports yet this year, so here is a relatively brief one outlining conditions. Our plan to split the climb into a Friday evening approach + Saturday climb did not quite go as planned, and ended up becoming my longest summit day yet at 21 hours… But we got the summit! Our timeline was roughly as follows Friday: 6:45 PM - Departure from trailhead 8:15 PM - Start of climbers trail 11:30 PM - Finally broke out of the treeline 12:30 PM - Bivy Saturday: 6:15 AM Start 7:20 AM - Slab crossing 9:40 AM - Top of notch 5:00 PM - Summit 8:50 PM - Bottom of rappels 11:50 PM - Back to main trail on Colchuck Lake 3:00 AM - Back to trailhead Notes on the route: -Navigating the off trail portion out of the treeline is nontrivial. We lost a lot of time trying to do this by headlamp, as we weren’t able to see the most efficient route out of the trees/slide alder. -For navigating the slab before the snow climb, we had one person solo it, then build an anchor and drop a rope for the rest of us. -I believe the snow finger going up to the notch where the climb starts usually defines if the route is still in. There was still a reasonable snow finger for us to climb up. -There’s a topo and route description floating around that describes the route in 5 long pitches, which we found generally as advertised. - We got off the summit in two double rope rappels. I hadn’t seen this mentioned in other trip reports, but the first rappel was the sketchiest rappel station I’ve ever used. It’s just a mid sized detached rock with webbing wrapped around its contact point with the ground. We backed this up with a gear anchor for everyone but the last to rappel. -Most of our trip after this was by headlamp. Thankfully I had been out there two weekends ago for Colchuck Peak, and was able to help plot a reasonably efficient path down Colchuck glacier and the boulder field in the dark. We dipped left into the moraine, then skirted the left side of the boulder field down until the lake. -The rest after this was an eventful if slow hike back to the trailhead due to navigating by headlamp + the fatigue starting to set in. Long day, but a fun climb! Has about all you can ask for in an alpine climb (could maybe do without the slide alder though lol) Route overview, including the bivy sites I saw on route Slab crossing Current snow finger conditions Top of pitch 3 Top of pitch 4/start of pitch 5. If using the topo map, I believe this station is actually ~10 meters earlier than recommended, and we needed to simul ~10 feet so that my partner could build an anchor at the actual end of pitch 5. Climber crossing the flakes on pitch 5 Backing up the sketchy first rappel station Gear Notes: Full rack. Not all was needed for the climb, but was helpful in completing the climb in 5 long pitches Approach Notes: see report above Edited June 17 by Christopher Fisher update notes 1 2 1 Quote
JasonG Posted June 16 Posted June 16 Wow, that is a big effort! I have had this on my list for a long time and still do....thanks for the report! 1 Quote
Lucas Ng Posted June 17 Posted June 17 Props for following that approach in the dark. Was tricky even with light. How was the traverse between bottom of Argo raps and the Colchuck glacier? I Remember it seemed like a slog so we quit and descended back into the Argo basin. Quote
Christopher Fisher Posted June 17 Author Posted June 17 33 minutes ago, Lucas Ng said: Props for following that approach in the dark. Was tricky even with light. How was the traverse between bottom of Argo raps and the Colchuck glacier? I Remember it seemed like a slog so we quit and descended back into the Argo basin. Thanks! The traverse over to Colchuck Glacier wasn't too bad. The only challenges were dealing with the continuous rock/snow transitions as the snow had firmed up quite a bit since we didn't wrap up the rappels until close to sunset (and we didn't feel like putting on crampons until we hit the constant snow higher up), and the unfortunate uphill to get up to the pass between Colchuck and Dragontail. But that stuff was just your typical slog after dealing with the technical climb/rappels on Argonaut (we decided it better than going back through the trees/slide alder in the dark though). Quote
Nick Sweeney Posted June 20 Posted June 20 Great work! I'd really like to do this one. I've been to that basin twice and that shwacky section in the woods is very hard to navigate. Enough so that I took detailed notes each time and made a GPX track for myself. How was the climbing on route? Quote
bsmith3491 Posted June 21 Posted June 21 Any photos of that pass between colchuck and dragon tail? Looking for beta on those south facing slopes. Quote
Christopher Fisher Posted June 25 Author Posted June 25 On 6/20/2025 at 9:31 AM, Nick Sweeney said: Great work! I'd really like to do this one. I've been to that basin twice and that shwacky section in the woods is very hard to navigate. Enough so that I took detailed notes each time and made a GPX track for myself. How was the climbing on route? I enjoyed it quite a bit! 5 long pitches of 5.6/5.7 climbing, not sustained, but some good variety. Great views on the way up too Quote
Christopher Fisher Posted June 25 Author Posted June 25 On 6/21/2025 at 10:33 AM, bsmith3491 said: Any photos of that pass between colchuck and dragon tail? Looking for beta on those south facing slopes. I sadly did not take any photos of that area. Closest I got was the last pic on my post (showing the first anchor). The background of that image was the pass heading up to Colchuck/Dragontail Quote
Alisse Posted July 1 Posted July 1 (edited) Thanks for your TR, Christopher! Dan and I had our own alpine adventure on the NW arete of Argonaut this past weekend, approaching and climbing to the summit on Saturday, sleeping near the summit, and descending Sunday. I am definitely glad we did it this way -- it made for two relaxed days without any need for headlamps and the snow on both approach day one and post-rappels day two was great for climbing, never too firm or icy. We thought the climbing was really fun and the whole trip had good adventure factor. I felt silly wearing trail runners and carrying light mountaineering boots AND rock shoes but it worked well for me; I think if I'd been climbing a whole lot of 5.8 recently I'd probably have felt good in approach shoes/not needing a third pair of footwear. We brought a single rack and that worked for us for 5 long pitches with a tiny bit of simuling. We were able to avoid MOST of the slide alder but luckily we weren't carrying skis and it wasn't the "trap you in place" variety so the handful of minutes of it didn't feel too tuff. We both switched to rock shoes for the "slab crossing" before the snow finger. The rock was sticky and great. There was snow under the big summit block so we didn't go thirsty with our summit bivy (beautiful sunset!). The descent made us think a little bit, but there are a lot of rap stations and trees and lots of beta. We did three single rope rappels and some 4th class downclimbing that could have been avoided... Here are our pics in case they're helpful for people heading out soon or hoping to check snow conditions in the area (high-quality photos are Dan's): Snow finger (that's a false top to it) Snowfield on the descent before starting rappels: Our second single rope rappel into the gully, we walked across 4' of flat snow then butt scooted/au chevalled the moat to get to the notch, rapped off tree on other side for third rappel: The traverse from the bottom of the raps over to the south side of the Colchuck Col was BEAUTIFUL: Edited July 1 by Alisse 2 1 1 Quote
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