Inspiration Peak approach gully?

[flatland]

Selected Climbs says that the approach gully to the West Ridge of Inspiration is loose. Has anyone done it? What was it like? Side views of the peak make it look terrible to bail from is that right?

[bubblebutt]

flatland said:

Selected Climbs says that the approach gully to the West Ridge of Inspiration is loose. Has anyone done it? What was it like? Side views of the peak make it look terrible to bail from is that right?

 

Flatland, what you doing? lying on the couch reading all those guide books and longing to be out here! I was onced moved by my company to Miami and spent all my time dreaming of the mountains, in the end I quite my job and moved back to an area with alpine climbing. Life's too short to spend time in the flatlands. MOVE!

[Tanked]

flatland said:

Selected Climbs says that the approach gully to the West Ridge of Inspiration is loose. Has anyone done it? What was it like? Side views of the peak make it look terrible to bail from is that right?

 

I have done it.

 

Loose is a tad on the mild side for an adjective. Horrific pile of crap in variable size from suitcase to VW that constantly spills down, crashing side to side before spitting out into the gaping moat below the entrance is more along the lines I'd use.

The weight of your gaze on each block is just as likely to send it tumbling as actually touching it.....

 

but thats just me...the guide also says it's become a fairly standard route (or something to that effect)

 

You cant possibly believe everything you read?

 

I have no idea where your seeing it from, but after the weather closed in on us, at the top of the gully, we bailed back through the shootin' gallery just fine. Dont expect bail webbing to survive long up there.

 

Go early enough and you might be lucky enough to have snow the entire way to the ridge.

 

I'll say no more

[forrest_m]

there was no loose rock at all when we did it in february.

 

(i apologize for the chest beat, but it is my 400th post!)

 

i have also come down it in the summer after doing the east ridge, and i don't remember thinking that it was shockingly loose, i.e. no worse than many other gullies out there. i do remember that the well established rap stations higher on the ridge did disappear in the gully, though we thought we had just missed the best descent line in the dark.

[JoshK]

forrest, snow is aid. Your ascent wasn't clean at all.

[mneagle]

That gully totally sucks and most of the rest of the route is way easy and boring. The east ridge is a much more solid and fun climb with the 5.9 crack being one of the best I've done.

[flatland]

mneagle said:

That gully totally sucks and most of the rest of the route is way easy and boring. The east ridge is a much more solid and fun climb with the 5.9 crack being one of the best I've done.

whoops, I am doing the East Ridge, I accidentally put down the west. I am glad that it is a good route, thanks for the info.

[Tennessee]

If you are going all the way in there to climb Inspiration, do the East Ridge for sure. There's a handcrack on it that is worth the whole approach. And the summit ridge traverse from the East summit to the West summit is one of the most photogenic areas in the Cascades.

 

As for the descent, we did 2 or 3 double rope raps off the summit, down the West Ridge. Then at the point where the W ridge just flattens out a bit, we started rappelling down the South face. It is pretty vertical and we figured there would be less of a chance of getting ropes stuck. (Plus only one of us carried boots, so the other 3 would have had to downclimb that snow gully in rock shoes). There were no other rap stations anywhere on this part of the south face, but the rappels went fairly well even though we had to leave tons of stoppers and slings. I haven't done the regular descent off the W ridge so I can't compare the two decents, but now that there's rap anchors built on that part of the S face, it might be worth considering.

 

If you want beta on the climb let me know.

 

my 2 cents . . .

[Tennessee]

I'm going to try to post a couple of pics from July 2001 . . .

[Tennessee]

OK that didn't work. Just click on the "attachment" link above. I can't figure out how to make it show up in the post. . .

[fern]

[fern]

[flatland]

Tennessee said:

 

If you want beta on the climb let me know.

 

my 2 cents . . .

 

Please, I would love any beta for the East Ridge. Thanks for the pictures, it looks great.

[Tennessee]

Thanks Fern for posting those. I'll have to figure out how to do that.

 

Beta: after 4.5 miles on the overgrown logging road (where it abruptly ends) follow the trail going right up the hill where the big cairn is. DO NOT follow red flagging tape that goes straight. Follow trail until you can't see it any more. Then go up, up, up, traverse, traverse, up, up, traverse until you break out of tree line and into heather meadows. After a lot more traversing you will see a wide notch in the ridge above you (there's a narrow notch to the left of the wide one that you don't want to ascend). There will be a large tongue of snow leading up to the wide one and a large rock buttress coming off it's left side. Even further left of the rock buttress will be views into the Southern Pickets and the Terror Basin. Go up to the notch and then drop down snow fields into the only flat spot for miles and a most perfect campsite with awesome views of your objective climb.

As for the climb itself, there's 3 pitches of sparsely protected 5th class climbing until you reach the ridge and gain your first views into the northern Pickets. Once on the ridge, here's the best piece of beta: There's a very large, phallic rock protrusion on the ridge just where it becomes steep. It creates a big roof. GO RIGHT of the roof and up and around the corner a bit for a short pitch of 5.8 or so. Then you'll end up on a little ledge on the right (Northern) side of the ridge where the incredible, wavey 5.9 handcrack splits a sheer wall. After that you are there. KILLER traverse from E to W summit, here's where you'll want to take photos. Descend your choice of routes on the W ridge.

 

If you remember nothing, remember to go RIGHT at the big protruding roof. We climbed it in 2 teams of 2 and one of our teams went left of the roof and ended up in some 10+ overhanging corner with lots of lichen and a chimney.

 

Upon hiking out, go to Good Food in Marblemount and try to eat an entire Mountain Burger. It's almost as hard as the climb.

 

[Lowell_Skoog]

You might also consider doing what I call the SW buttress. It's a cross between the south face and the west ridge that I did a few years ago with my brother Carl. You start with the first pitch or two of the south face route, then where the south face route angles right up a ramp, you continue straight up toward the crest of the buttress that forms the lower extension of the west ridge. There is some good rock and nice climbing and the overall difficulty of the climb is about II-III, 5.8. One nice feature of this climb is that you can leave your boots at the bottom and rappel back down the route. (We didn't think of that until we descended the W ridge gully, after carrying our boots, ice axes and crampons over the top.) It's a nice route.

[Rad]

Fellow fools,

I'm planning a little adventure and am considering the E Ridge of Inspiration. I think we're up to it but I'd like some beta on condns, descent etc. FYI, we did the E ridge of Forbidden and are looking for an alpine rock route of similar or better caliber...and we're actually looking forward to thrashing in to the Terror basin.

 

A few questions:

1 - I'd like to take just 1 rope (60m). Is that good enough for the descent of the W ridge or down the S face variation? Are there any landmarks for where you started that S face raps? Maybe we can utilize the gear you left behind...

2 - What can you say about the upper Terror glacier. My glacier experience (3 years and a dozen routes or so) is lower than my rock experience (13 yrs of trad rock all over). Obviously we'll bring ax/crampons/rope. Any special considerations or comments on difficulties, moat, bergschrunds? It will be late August when we're there.

3 - What rock gear is needed? Standard rack? Large gear? I'm confortable running it out on terrain up to 5.7 or 5.8 but probably want to have the right gear for the 5.9 crux.

4 - Where is the best place to camp?

5 - Estimated time for RT from high camp? (on E ridge of Forbidden we took 21 hrs from a camo low in the Boston Basin back to same - w/a nap on the slabs under the light of the full moon - and we had to wait for 90 minutes before we could pass a slower party at the start of the route).

FYI, we're giving ourselves 4 days car to car - 1 day in, 1 day to climb, 1 day for weather contingencies, dashing up MacMillan, or just absorbing the wilderness ambience while dreaming of pizza, and 1 day out.

Thanks.

 

[Crackbolter]

If you go, you wil be dealing with very broken glaciers. It would be best to plan this trip in July unless you plan on descending down to McMillan. You will be required to hop crevasses to get back down off the glacier so I would suggest bringing the proper snow anchors. I personally wouldn't try and attempt the descent this late in the year but that said, I will admit to being inadequate in this area of expertise.

 

 

Edited August 12, 2003 by Crackbolter

[Alasdair]

I was up there last weekend. Although possible you will either have to spend a large amount of time route finding on incredibly scetchy snow bridges or find a route accross the leftward trending rock rib that seperates the terror glacier from the snowfield below Mcmillan. there are huge crevasses accross nearly all of the terror glacier right now, and this will only get worse. We had a similar goal to you, but lazyness caused us to climb mcmillan instead. As I said, I think it could be done, but expect a many hour experience both there and back, or wait till next year.