[TR] Argonaut Peak - NW Arete 06/14/2025

[Christopher Fisher]

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 16 hours ago by Christopher Fisher
update notes

[JasonG]

Wow, that is a big effort!  I have had this on my list for a long time and still do....thanks for the report!

[Lucas Ng]

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.

[Christopher Fisher]

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).