[TR] Eldorado zone tour, with EMS - South and west ridges of Eldorado, SW face of Early Morning Spire 08/08/2025

[JonParker]

Trip: Eldorado zone tour, with EMS - South and west ridges of Eldorado, SW face of Early Morning Spire

Trip Date: 08/08/2025

Trip Report:

 

Got to do some routes in the Eldorado neighborhood from a base camp last weekend. This was another trip I’ve been meaning to do for a long time where the pieces finally fell into place.

 

Climbed with Ben who has learned quickly in the three years since he started climbing. Solid partner, his only real error was leaving glasses back at the car. On the first day this was mitigated with some tmnt Inuit tech.

Cowabunga!

Luckily at camp there was a climber who elected to stay there while his guided team climbed the E ridge. Heard the guide had extra shades and we arranged to borrow them for the weekend.

Sky harp

We set off for the south ridge. I love knife edges so found the route just barely in the worth doing once category. If you don’t particularly enjoy knife edges there’s no reason to do this climb. 

Unincorporated choss county

Some fun atmospherics helped make it somewhat enjoyable despite some of the worst quality rock I’ve climbed.

We counted it as good mental prep for W arete the next day. At the end of our three hour tour camp to camp we arrived to find the guide-lended glasses waiting for us. Most of the rock climbing in the next two days was in the shade, but this was still quite the score.

Got up early the next day for the W arete and kind of raced another party departing camp right after us. There turned out to be a third party on the route that day too (!)

Below Dorado Needle col we saw tracks through a snow bench above and left of the tarn, and followed these around to slabs near the sit start of the route. We misjudged the heathery path from below. What looked fine turned out to be dirty, crumbly, overly narrow and exposed, with mostly down sloping rock and dirt. This was a bit of a traverse coming from the NW to the ridge around 6700-6800’. Not at all recommended, there must be a better way, maybe more directly from the west? The other two parties took the considerably higher entrance from snow that bypasses all the green stuff, which seems more appealing in retrospect, though it looks like it has a bit of hazard too (steep, bad runouts).

We were glad to be in front. There was one particularly thunderous episode of rock fall accompanied by muffled shouts and we were relieved to eventually see all 5 climbers back at camp that evening.

After pulling through some legitimately scary terrain we soloed up briefly sound rock before it got questionable again.

Then we started to simul. I think two blocks got us into the gendarmes.

We had climbed up a chimney to a piton, but it didn’t look anything like photos of the crux traverse. After some confusion we saw another piton down below and realized we were above that crux. We rapped past it. It looks exciting, kinda wish we climbed it.

Unintentionally mimicking the rocks’ posture

From there two more blocks got us past the snow into lower angle terrain where we unroped. I found mostly pretty good stuff to the summit. The path of least resistance isn’t always the best path.

It was so early I proposed heading back down for the SW buttress of Dorado Needle but we elected to rest up for EMS instead. With the south ridge the day before, the west arete completed the Eldorado compass for me (north and of course east ridges climbed before).

South ridge! Meh

I enjoyed solitude on the summit for a while and left as a large group of sunburned youth neared the top.

The hours lazily drifted by. We chatted with various day trippers throughout the afternoon.

Another early start had us retracing our steps to Dorado col.

Celestial choss, earthly choss

This time we passed by the tarn and its outlet stream.

One slope looked inviting but it cliffed out on the other side. Proceeding lower we found a nice path through trees to cross the ridge with friendly heather downclimbing.

EMS presents quite the striking mien all along the approach.We met someone at camp the night before who had his own route beta for EMS which he shared with us. Compared to Nelson’s it had a direct start, and above that, more of a diversion to the right and back left, rather than straight up. Both of these variations turned out to be good calls.

The start was a little tricky in terms of climbing and pro.

First piece.

The climbing quickly got to be really fun. After about 70m I took the lead. After scoping a more direct line I tried the shallow right facing corner diversion to the right, and was pretty delighted with this section. I think this wide low angle splitter was in this pitch.

I stopped about 70m later just below the ledge below the crux roof. Ben took over again and dispatched the slightly wet moves and drifted out of sight.

This pitch ended up maybe 80m with a little simuling to the slab under to the roof. As I followed pitch 3 the rope hung over some excellent mid 5th friction slabs, where Ben had fortunately not placed pro. I took these optional sections (easier ledges around) to make the pitch even better (right of this photo, out of frame).Pitch 4 was another rope stretcher with quality stone and low-mid 5th climbing. Ben took off again and neared the ridge crest. He selected a scruffy 5.10 chimney to get us to the slab and stopped there. I got to lead the finger traverse above this slab, another route highlight.

I crossed the crest and continued the pitch but placed hardly anything, mostly focused on keeping the trailing rope from crossing the abundant choss that now sadly replaced the excellent rock. A seventh rope stretcher got us near to the summit ridge. We did one more short pitch that turned out to be unnecessary, should have unroped after 7. Tempered expectations may have been a factor, but we reveled in how good this route turned out to be. It’s not Stuart range classic quality but I think it’s up there with some three-four star WA pass routes, with an obviously much more engaging approach and return than you can find there.

Our descent began with sandy goat ledges on the south side of the ridge.

When this cliffed out we crossed back north. It was very exposed here with a deep moat below, but with bomber easy staircase rock leading down. There was one low 5th body length, an awkward long step and then we were at the moat. The gap was significant but absolutely doable. Still got high dive butterflies before finally making the leap. When Ben’s turn came he sprang from both feet, launching far beyond the gap and came skating into me lol.

The hypothetical descent to the south had looked atrocious during the approach, and there is at least one epic going that way documented here on cc. We instead followed the advice to climb snow to the choss saddle north of marble peak.

At the crest we saw rather steep snow to the east, so followed the snow up and south to get a look around. This passed so close to the summit we thought we might as well tag it.

Took rock down here to bypass the steep snow. I scouted south while Ben scouted north. We never found existing anchors, so when a good crack on the north end below the steep snow presented itself we set an anchor and rapped down. 70m easily made it, might have been 25m or so.

Next we crossed the McAllister, almost exactly matching my track from 3 years ago (snow levels early August this year look even lower than early September 2022).

Having decided to skip our last night out, we zipped over to camp, packed up, ate dinner, and quickly hiked down, getting past the boulders and close to the bottom before pulling the head lamps out. The dip in the creek at the end was extremely necessary and welcome in a dumbfounding sort of way.

 

 

 

 

 

Gear Notes:
Doubles 0.3 to 1, single 2 and 3. Some C3s and nuts. Ax and crampons. 70m rope. Radios were very useful for our long pitch strategy on EMS.

Approach Notes:
Counter clockwise

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 27 minutes ago by JonParker
Photos

[lunger]

Cool trip and nice pics! EMS looks like particularly good rock -- still on the list.

[Ben Hyver]

Great writeup Jon, so nice getting to climb together this weekend!

[JonParker]

Oops first there doubles of each photo, now they’re all gone.