Dragontail/Backbone Ridge

[AlpineK]

Cman and I climbed Backbone Ridge on Sat the 19th. We left town on friday evening and stopped at CJZ's place to borrow some wide crack pro.

 

At 3 AM we started hiking to Colchuck lake. At about half way up the hill to the lake there was enough light to switch off our headlamps. We got to the base of the rock and scrambled up to the start of the climb just as sun was hitting the tops of the peaks.

 

I lead the offwidth, and I was glad to have 2 giant cams. Even with the cams I still had to run it out quite a bit. The crack was super fun though with good rests on knee jams. Cman led the next pitch which was alright. We got a little off route, but with a little downclimbing we got back on track. The next section of the ridge was pretty forgettable, but we eventually got to the fin.

 

The climbing on the fin was really good. nice face/crack climbing on the first pitch. The second pitch has some great crack climbing, and the third is a really cool traversing pitch. After some more low 5th class stuff we scrambled to the summit.

 

The hike down was uneventfull. The hike down from Asgard pass was painfull, but after that and some more hiking we got to the car at about 8 PM.

 

Cman did a good job driving us back to Seattle, and I was spraying on CC by 11 PM

 

[cs]

What ever happened to the road being closed? As I heard it was to be closed on the 14th of this month.

[Coondog]

Cman & AlpineK -- nice work... glad to hear you didn't bother to enjoy the night view from a ledge on the Fin (though I can't say I didn't enjoy it a bit...)

 

Cheers

[AlpineK]

I think the road is closing this week or next.

 

Kind of sucks, or it might be a really good time to head up that way, as long as you don't mind walking on roads for a ways.