[TR] South & North Twin Sister- West Ridges 11/11/2004

[AlpinistAndrew]

Climb: South & North Twin Sister-West Ridges

 

Date of Climb: 11/11/2004

 

Trip Report:

11/10/04-11/12/04

My buddy and I rode our bikes in on Wed. night and set up camp at Dailey Prairie. The next morning we got up early and went up towards the W. Ridge of N. Twin, then dropped into the basin between the N and S Twin (we had attempted aiming directly for the basin from the logging roads and going through the forest before and had bad luck, so we just opted to do a bit of ascending up N. Twin's W ridge to get to the basin). The west ridge of South Twin was a great rock scramble, but long though. The last section including some slushy snow. But snow on the north sides of the ridge was ice hard. (we boulder hopped on the icy snow stuff, for we ditched our snow gear low on the route). We summited at 2pm and got in the basin between the two peaks at 5pm, and it was pitch black. We didn't really want to hike all the way back up to the W. Ridge of N. Twin and back to our camp, plus it involved some routefinding and climbing. So we bivouaced there in the basin. It was a long night sleeping on the packs and sharing a space blanket. We saw lots of shooting stars and the northern lights. We got up at dawn the next morning, hungry and tired, but we went and climbed the West ridge of N. Twin since we had to get up onto the ridge crest anyway to get back down. We then down climbed back to our camp and rode our bikes out which took a half hour of riding (it was fun flyin' down those logging roads). Overall an awesome trip. Though the Twin sisters aren't technically that difficult, I always seem to underestimate them, they are a bit committing, lots of terrain to cover climbing them.

 

Gear Notes:

Helmets

 

Approach Notes:

Snow free road/trail

[Bill_Simpkins]

Awesome!

BTW, there is a nice trail going up into the basin. The South Twin is a really nice climb. It gets probably about 1/60 of the traffic of the North Twin. Entering the ridge from the basin like you did is the way to go. I did the complete W. Ridge once and it was just a lot of schwackin.

Sounds like a fun bivy!