[TR] Gunsight - E and SW faces of Middle, S ridge of South 07/13/2025

[JonParker]

Trip: Gunsight - E and SW faces of Middle, S ridge of South

Trip Date: 07/13/2025

Trip Report:

 

I had the tremendous luck of finding a pair of climbers (Rebecca and Shane) who wanted to check out the Gunsight range using a rope team larger than 2 for the Chikamin. We climbed as a party of 3. They turned out to be excellent climbers and excellent company.

 

First I’ll stick mostly to the things I wish I knew beforehand, inaccurate beta, etc.

On our second day we blindly followed tracks of a party about a half hour ahead of us in the Chikamin which led to the lowest pass. Getting on the rock it seemed like possibly low 5th slab and too far south of Gunsight. We decided we were in the wrong place. I briefly scoped the next gully north which was terrible. We then found the right path, using mostly clean slabs. In Blake’s book the arrow isn’t quite in the right place, we were one notch north of his line, in the “s” in “peaks”.

We had hoped to climb E face of Middle this day but with the lost time settled on S ridge of S peak. We would later find out that doing E face of Middle on day 2 is doable only if everything goes right, no route finding issues, climbing and descending efficiently. A better plan that I’d recommend to most coming from Downey is to aim for SW face of Middle for your day 2.

P2 and start of P3 on S ridge S Gunsight:

S ridge of S Gunsight is a garbage climb. The first pitch is not terrible but the face after an ok corner is covered in black lichen and any pro seemed worthless. Hard to find an anchor on top of the choss ridge. Much less than the reported 45m. The next very short pitch, again much shorter than in our description, has an exciting knife edge lean + leap onto the rock that begins the cannon hole (my first trad dyno I think). From there we expected 5.4 to finish the climb. I went back and forth, high and low, repeatedly dead ending near a notch with lots of tat. Finally I committed to a delicate and highly exposed 5.8-5.9 stem around a corner to get to a downclimb to the notch. From there I ran the rope out to the summit at somewhat dirty low 5th. Looking back I saw how the follower would be exposed to a big pendulum and deck, so I encouraged my partners to just rap that step off the existing tat. With a couple raps we were back on the east side retracing our steps to the notch. Numerous steep hard snow interruptions to the slabs involved time sucking crampon on-off transitions. I was grumpy about 2 days of effort to climb 3 pitches of choss but we caught a gorgeous sunset just as we reached the notch. From there we traversed high on snow and slabs below Gunsight to get to where we had stashed our bivies.

The next day we tried again for E face of Middle. Rather than circle around the peak again Rebecca had the great idea of climbing the SW Beckey route, rapping S to the notch, then rapping E to get to the E face. The Beckey route was straightforward low-mid 5th choose your own adventure on fun solid rock with lots of knobs, which we began from a small cave just above the best moat crossing we found. The summit register’s last entry was from 3 years prior, a party doing gunrunner.

We did one rap south beginning a little below the summit, backing up the slightly suspect block. From there a double rope rap from a higher confidence anchor got us to the notch. The anchor we found there wasn’t very great but we couldn’t find better options. I immediately found the e side to be mostly steep dirt. Angling slightly south I found an ok nut anchor maybe 45m down from the notch. A double rope rap from there got us down to the very dirty snow. This might have been the dirtiest gully I’ve descended up to that point.

The high quality of the E face lived up to the hype, though misleading beta vexed us at times. Our first pitch was quite long due to low snow and glacial recession. Comparing our photos to some from 15 years ago there was some thing like 50-100 feet of rusty rock that had been covered in snow in the earlier photos.

The pitch 2 crux is right off the deck and maybe sandbagged (or I was just tired). Awkward, tricky, exposed to decking, it took me about 4 tries to lead through it. I don’t think the pitch was more than 15m. This was another ledge where a good anchor was hard to find. Pitch3 (10c) was actually easier than pitch2. Shane had stopped one ledge short of the proper start of pitch 4. We worried about linking that step into pitch 4 because it’s supposedly 45m. In reality pitch4 turned out to be more like 30m. Oh well.

The pitch 4 climbing was fantastic and its crux (10d) was another possible sandbag. I could not have led it. Very demanding powerful moves finally got me through it after a few attempts. 
By now the hour was late and we were looking at the mental crux of the runout 5.9 slab. Shane led this one too. Rebecca went second and I came last. I was glad to have watched them for beta on the subtle step down crux at the most run out point. Brilliant colors lit up the horizon while it was my turn but I could give it only fleeting attention as I concentrated at the crux. Once through I ran up the ridge (low 5th? Didn’t notice any 5.8) in the twilight, basically a full 60m rather than the 15m our beta advised.

We repeated the rap sequence south to the notch as it grew dark windy and cold. The rope got stuck during the pull here. With much effort Shane finally freed the rope. 
The descent to the east was a known thing at this point but I argued that it was so bad that the descent to the west couldn’t possibly be worse. About this I turned out to be wrong. 
We did one short rap to an anchor south of the main gut/vomitorium of the gulley, with resident snaffles greeting us at both ends of the rap. From there Shane plunged into the unknown, over an overhang, choss diarrhea of all sizes being released. At a full 60m we went off rope and I took a clean slab ramp around a corner and found good cracks while they pulled the rope. Somehow that rap didn’t destroy us or the ropes. We placed a cam anchor and got past the steep icy snow onto lower angle stuff and began the traverse back to camp, arriving around 2am. We made dinner, celebrated, and tucked in around 3.

Next morning I went back with the suspicion that our anchor could be reached on class 4 slabs that we couldn’t see well in the dark. It turned out to have a little low 5th, so rapping was definitely the right call for the circumstance. But I was glad to recoup our gear. 
Having encountered the worst and second worse gullies of my life on either side of middle gunsight I now think that the best way to retreat is probably down the SW Beckey route. It’s ledgey so it would be best to downclimb most of it with some raps where it makes sense. And best done in the daylight, after climbing it at least once so you know the way at least approximately.

Faded from the unexpected epics our only goal for day 4 was to get back to Itswoot ridge, beginning around noon.

But around 1:40 at about 7K’ we heard a voice from a distance. We stopped and listened. Heard it again. Could barely make out words like “broken ankle” “helicopter”, “alone”. We pressed the SOS. The voice seemed to be vaguely in the Sinister area but we couldn’t tell where. We started backtracking and did some Marco Polo every few minutes without success. Finally passing east of the north face of Sinister we saw what we realized was a person. He was not moving and covered in a gray sleeping bag so we hadn’t been able to tell him apart from a rock at a distance.

Maintaining some privacy here, we found that he was indeed immobilized and in severe pain and needed rescue. His inspiration and his equipment were in disharmony and this had culminated in a long and presumably very rapid slide down snow NE of Sinister. Fortunately over cracks, unfortunately meeting some rock(s) along the way.

A little while later a father and daughter were coming down the Chikamin. It was nice to have more help. We did our best to keep him warm and as comfortable as possible as we waited for SAR. When the helicopter came we were surprised that it took so many laps through the area (maybe 5?) before two rescuers finally were lowered down with a litter.

The morning had begun mostly cloudy but the afternoon was quite brilliant. Some rain approached quickly from the north and reached us just as the helicopter took off with the victim and SAR people aboard. We restarted our ascent in the rain, reaching our turnaround point >4.5 hours after we had stopped. This guy was quite fortunate that several people happened to be in ear shot on a week day in such a remote area.

The rain cleared half way up the Chikamin and gave way to that kind of really clear atmosphere that seems to come on the heels of misty alpine weather. We found a wonderful spot past Dome glacier, well before Itswoot and called it a day. 
The highlights of our last day included a brief swim in cub lake, the flora above cub lake, and the many berries along Downey. Less fun was stuffing our pockets full with entirely unnecessary flagging all along very obvious trail along Bachelor. Some of it quite haphazardly stuffed onto bark like so 

Gunsight delivered adventure in more ways than I could have anticipated. For people going there for the first time I’d advise to stay the fuck out of the gullies on both sides of Middle, bring lots of gear for rap anchors because there seems to be little traffic there, skip south gunsight, and expect everything to take longer than you’d think.

Photo dump will go here:

 

Gear Notes:
Double to 2, one 3, one 4. 2x60m twin. In reach (please people). Knife for tape.

Approach Notes:
Downey approach is currently straightforward. Trail work has been done all the way to Bachelor

 

 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by JonParker

[olyclimber]

Holy moly pictures I love it!!!

[Stefan]

So let me get this right.  You came across a soloist.  Who was injured.  By Sinister Mountain?  And then by chance another two people come?  Whoa.

[olyclimber]

Damn! 

[JonParker]

Yeah 5 people in the vicinity within an hour or two of the event, on a Monday at least 1.5 days from a road (for most). Would have been game over otherwise.

While remote, the ptarmigan traverse does seem to be blowing up.

Edited Thursday at 01:11 AM by JonParker

[Grant789]

Very cool seeing gunsight getting climbed! Nice work and glad you all were able to get the hiker a rescue!

[Nick Sweeney]

Absolutely fantastic trip report and photos. I'm hoping to visit the Gunsight range later this summer. I noticed that you mention that you found two climbers who "wanted to check out the Gunsight range using a rope team larger than 2 for the Chikamin." Is the Chikamin particularly broken up? I was planning on just one partner but maybe I'm missing something.

[JasonG]

Quite the difficult adventure climbing way back in there @JonParker, way to keep it safe and somewhat sane!

Less sane is solo broken ankle dude.  To say he won the lottery is putting it mildly.  Good on you guys for helping redeem what likely would have been a very bad outcome.

[JonParker]

9 hours ago, Nick Sweeney said:

I was planning on just one partner but maybe I'm missing something.

It’s a matter of personal preference. Chikamin is big and deep, there are some house swallowers there. But I think you’ll find 2 person parties are not rare.