[TR] Chimney Rock- E. Face Direct 7/3/2004

[Rod_Xuereb]

Climb: Chimney Rock-E. Face Direct

 

Date of Climb: 7/3/2004

 

Trip Report:

This is my first TR so bear with me.

 

The trail in is excellent but the log crossing is washed out and a new one exists about 50 yards downstream. Follow the new trail to intersect the old one and go left over a shallow gully. You should end up near the far end of an old gray log that spans the gully. Pick up the trail here and follow it to the rock outcropping as described in Beckey(the one with the fire pit). From here follow the trail up and right to avoid a lot of slide alder and much pain. Eventually you will hit the rock buttress and a better trail with flagging that goes right to left under the buttress. This will come into the scree basin below the glacier with many good bivy spots.

We followed the leftmost 45 degree plus (seems steeper coming down on headlamp) snow ramp out of the basin after we were almost hit by bowling ball sized vitually silent ice balls. Cross the glacier easily to the start of the route. The start is well noted by some old pink runner in a left facing dihedral. Follow the route as described in the Smoot book up to the Key ledge. On the sixth pitch 5.3 we didn't really climb a "pretty" dihedral but went straight up some vertical, hard to protect, lichen covered

rock. It would be advised to look more carefully to the sides of this wall. Also I noted an old pin my partner didn't clip about 2/3 the way up this pitch. Continue up to the Key ledge and work your way to below the obvious set of chimneys. I chose the one to the right of what I would call a headwall, the leftmost and the narrower of the 2. In retrospect I may have picked the wrong one

as Fred describes stemming and a large chockstone. Well, there was "stemming" but it was no wider than heel-knee and the chockstone was only14-15 inches wide. As I finally was able to place a piece I was found to be "stemming" with my old MSR helmet as I got it stuck twice while placing the pro. After some animal sounds and cursing I moved out onto the face to the right of this chimney's entrance that allowed scrambling to the top.

The rap station went to the east but we rapped down to our packs that were rejected by the narrow enclosure.

13 raps later we were on the glacier.

We left camp at 0540 and got back at 2317 for a 17 hr 37 minute day. Too long for a couple of 50 year olds, even fit ones.

 

Suggestions:

Leave earlier. We belayed all the rock pitches, others may not. If you are on route the chances of falling are small but the consequences severe. Do not underestimate this route. I thought that this was a lot harder than the N.E. Buttress of Goode, except for the approach.

 

Gear Notes:

Ax, crampons, medium alpine rack with small cams and small to medium nuts usefull. Lowe slider's worked in a few places where nothing else did. Bring a real headlamp not even the brightest LED. Lots or runners unless you are the manky rapping king.

We used a 60m 9.4mm rope.

I was a bit nervous after having our 10.5 mm rope cut by rockfall last year. However, laziness trumped fear and wisdom and I sweated each rope pull after the rap. Two ropes would be prudent.

 

Approach Notes:

The snow and access to the route off the glacier are excellent and will be good for a couple more weeks.

[Alex]

Thanks, good effort! I've always been interested in Chimney Rock, maybe I'll find myself up there soon!

[tread_tramp]

Nice going Rod; I'm glad you went back and got it this year. Was a year ago today that we were on that route together.

[Terry_McClain]

Congrats Rod! Thanks for the TR as well. It sounds like you guys had much better weather than jhammaker and I. If only we had waited one extra day . We went right at the rock buttress and got onto snow slopes above. I think this put us around 5600' for our high camp. We never even saw the mountain because of all the clouds and turbo mist/rain. Did you see any of our tracks in the snow?

[ncascademtns]

Nice work Rod. We need to get out and climb again. It has been a while.

[Rod_Xuereb]

Here's a photo. The books don't do it justice.

 

Rod

[pope]

 

We once bivied on that rocky outcrop next to the ice fall. I recall that on a perfectly calm night a freak gust of wind grabbed my sleeping bag and sent it flying. My buddy Rob nearly fell over the cliff trying to save it!

 

Next morning we climbed right through some guys' bivouac half way up the wall; we were scolded for our dress-code violations (lycra and T-shirts--these guys were sporting woolies and gators). We climbed a pitch on the summit block that appeared to be off-route, a steep arete (5.7x) left of a deep, nearly vertical chimney.

[klenke]

Sergio & I climbed the EFD yesterday. The moat at the base of the rock is still good-to-go. We belayed the first pitch off the snow (probably the crux for the day; mid-fifth), simul-climbed up to the first grassy ledge and subsquently up the left-trending ramp. Running belayed the Class 4/low-5 section between ramp and Key Ledge, belayed the obvious chimney above the ledge, running belayed right to the two parallel chimneys, then belayed the left chimney for the first half, finishing up the climb on the face to the chimney's right to attain the summit. 6 hours up from camp at the big bivy boulder in the basin (c. 4,600 ft).

 

Forest fire smoke was all around us. No distant views whatsoever.

 

On the descent (with a 60m rope), we rappeled 8 times to get back to snow (took 2 hours or so). Some downclimbing was undertaken in between rappels. There were quite a few rap stations on the route. Some of these seemed pointless...but did provide some nice new sling booty.

 

About 4 hours from summit to camp then another 3.5 hours back to the trailhead. The climb can be done in day from the Pete Lake Trailhead but that would be quite grueling. We did it in two days (really 1.5 days) but could see how three days (or 2.5 days) would be much more agreeable given the time.

 

All in all a good route and mountain. Similar to NE Ridge of Triumph, South Buttress of Cutthroat, and NE Buttress of Goode.

[AJScott]

Heading there this weekend...thanks for the info! hope to bivy on the summit, if its not to much of a pain to haul up the bivy gear.

Thanks

[chucK]

Excellent Klenke old boy! Pip pip cheerio and all that wot!

 

where's the damn photos?

[klenke]

ChucK: I will probably make a Chimney Rock page on summitpost in the near future. Until that time, NO PHOTOS FOR YOU!

 

AJScott:

Here is a map of the approach to the East Face Direct.

Map is big so may render slowly for those with lame internet connections. Beckey's East Face Route which goes up the wide gully to the left of the face looked pretty unenjoyable (steep hard snow in couloir) making the EFD the better choice. Follow the black dashed line to the face as there was much snow block sloughing going on while we were there in the red dashed area (Rod_Xuereb's Route). If we had decided to go that we'd have been clobbered as an avy occured at the time we would have been underneath it.

 

There is a spot to bivy on the summit (room for two people in a rockwalled up area). It's actually on the next crag summit to the south. I don't think it would be a problem to get to it. It's only about 50 feet from the true summit. Come to think of it, though, there were plenty of slabby flat spots on the true summit block.

 

Also, when you get up there, look for a small register canister under some rocks. There will be another piece of paper tucked under a rock. This piece of paper was soaking wet so I left it out to dry. Please put it back in the register. Actually, a better idea would be to take along a new smallish book to act as a new register. There is no book in there now, just one piece of paper with Sergio's and my name on it 7/27/04 and, interestingly, the Vetter Bros. on 7/27/03. Maybe you could simply transcribe these two entries to the new register.

[Alpinfox]

Summit registers suck, but Hooray for Klenke!

 

Edited July 29, 2004 by Alpinfox

[klenke]

Whatever, Pax.

 

Here is a topo for the East Face Direct (as Sergio & I did it). Others may do it differently. Pink refers to standard belayed pitches; green to running belays. Last water encountered on route was at the small snow blocks at the base of the diagonal ramp.

[klenke]

Here is an annotated view of the approach ridge. The pink route is Class 2/3 with only one notch to negotiate past (descend to tree on south side of notch). Snow angles are not a problem (at least with aluminum crampons). July 27, 2004.

[AJScott]

Jeez, thanks man! That is so informitive, I am really exited about this trip. Last summer when I was up on Lemah all I could think about was my desire to climb that even bigger and badder looking mountain close by, AND THAT MOUNTAIN WAS CHIMNEY ROCK.

 

 

Thanks a lot, I will be taking off tonight after work and sleeping at the trail head, will post some photos!