Jim Posted August 2, 2004 Posted August 2, 2004 Climb: Mt. Maude-North Face Date of Climb: 7/24/2004 Trip Report: A week late but I was in the Sawtooths for a week right after this. We hiked up into Leroy Basin (Nelson's suggestion) rather than coming from the other side (east to west) in Becky. Nice camping on a bench around 7,000 ft below the Seven Finger Jack - Maude col. A bit buggy and it was a hot weekend. Watched the copters dropping water on a fire one drainage over in the late afternoon. Started around 6:30 on Sunday. From the col we dropped down some steep snow (50 deg) for one hundred feet or so, and then we started traversing the two large rock ribs (going east) This was straight-forward, if you find yourself on exposed 4th class you're in the wrong place. A big billy traversed ahead of us, staying 50 yrds away and occassionally making classic poses on rocks. We had to drop only about 100 ft to reach the base of the route. I was worried that the snow would be soft in the heat wave but it was perfect for kicking steps. We chose to use running belays off a few pickets, but those more confident on steep snow could go without the rope (except at the top). About 4/5s up the route I was in lead when handfuls of baseball-sized rock and gravel started coming from the rock band above. It was our goat friend taking a curious look at us. I had to keep side-stepping a few whizzing rocks while warning my partner below. Yikes! I started traversing up and right and the goat was shadowing me, trundling away. I thought it would be good to move closer to the rock band to let the trundles pass over me when I found the moat quite far from the rock. I first plunged the ax into empty space - oh-oh. Trying to back away one leg poked through and while trying to move along the lip collapsed way back and I dropped in about 8 ft. Sputtering as I pulled out and over the lip, with snow under my sunglasses and in my ears I sat and rested on the lip when I noticed that trundle goat was continuing his efforts to bonk me. That was enough and I yelled at him and he wandered off. The top 50 ft or so of the route was ice, which we protected with one screw. Would have been fun if this were a couple hundred feet or so. This top part is about 60 deg or so. At the time you could bypass the ice to the left on 4th class rock. We chose the left hand chute option, it looked like the right side option was a bit steeper but had no ice. Nelson suggests the "easy gully" to the west for a decent. We read a nasty account of some climbers trying this but it turned into an epic. We tried to find the way down but kept getting cliffed out -so were not in the right gully spur I suppose. We climbed back up 1,000 ft to the summit and went towards Ice Lakes, then made the traverse. Thanks to the team of three that came up the standard route for showing use this traverse back to Leroy Basin. Gear Notes: 7mm rope took crampons but did not use 3 pickets 3 screws, used one Approach Notes: Hot Quote
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