Chianti or Burgandy Spire

[David_Parker]

Anyone been up either of these recently. What about knocking both off in one trip? Info on availability of H2O in early to mid August too? Any tips/beta much appreciated. approach, time, pitches, descent etc?

DPP

[Retrosaurus]

David,

It shouldn't be a problem to pick off both in a weekend trip. You could do the approach on Friday afternoon, bivy at Burgundy col, Chianti on Saturday and Burgundy and out to the car on Sunday.

It seems that the approach took about three hours but was a real nut-buster. The descents are reasonably straight forward with two ropes for the rappels.

There should be water 5-10 minutes below the east side of the col.

The wide crack on Chianti is really not that wide; it is really just fists, unless you have small hands.

I highly recommend the North Ridge option on the North Face of Burgundy. It has two or three pitches of very aesthetic climbing on a knife edge ridge very high on the spire.

 

[Bob_Clarke]

Did both routes in one weekend. Hiked to the col and did Burgandy that day. Snafflehounds are a hassle at the bivy. Chianti-Classic, absolutely fabulous.....

 

I cant see doing both routes in one day. For specific beta feel free to email me directly.

[David_Parker]

Not to bring up an old subject, but what kind of knife do I need to fend off snaffelhounds? What the #%$&*^ is a snafflehound anyway? Don't stray too far here...keep the real beta coming!

[Bob_Clarke]

The col is plauged by large (LARGE) mice-mouse-snafflehound-all around nuisance creatures that run around at night eating anything. One was standing on my partners bag about shoulder height while he was sleeping during the night eating crumbs.

The first 5.10 OW pitch isn't bad. I took only one 4" cam and worked fine (are you ok with runouts?). The upper wide pitch I scooted the cam along (there is a rusty 1/4" bolt entering the crack)(I'm sure the "other" trad boi's would never clip it) that was a grunt. Route finding is straight forward and the summit unbelievable. Have fun.

[mneagle]

I climbed Burgandy Spire 2 days ago with my girlfriend. The turnout is on the right 3.8 mi after the WA Pass sign. If you see the Cutthroat Peak trail sign, it's one turnout behind you. There is a great trail from the turnout that hits the Early Winters Creek and continues on the other side about 15 feet to the left. Instead of crossing Burgandy Creek, the new trail goes lefdt and parallels it. We stopped to pump water and still made it to the basin in under 2 hours and to the col in another hour. The trail out of the basin goes up straight towards Vasiliki Tower and then cuts right through a few treed ridge lines to come out below Burgandy Col. Nelson says the altitude at the col is 7950, but my altimeter said 7700. The summit is 8400 in the book and on my altimeter, making me think it was a typo in the book. The first several pitches to the big ledge are obvious from the visible rap stations. We took the original route, up to the left, making a slight variation climbing on the right side of a 5.9 dihedral just above the belay before climbing up and left to the arete, clipping the bolt and setting up a belay. In Becky's huide, he said the original party went left and threw a rope over the 2nd tower. I took a look around there and found a cool 30 foot 4 inch crack that was at least hard 5.10. Instead, we went over to the west side and down around the next spire to go up the 5.8 chimney. It's hard to protect but better than the 4" 5.10 crack 5-6 feet to the left. We rapped off the west face and diagonally down towards the north face after passing a rap station and continued down 2 more rap stations to the climber's right of the route to the sandy ledge and then down the gully to just beneath the col. Rope drag was a big problem near the top, which accounted for our total 6 pitches. Use double rope rappels. There is glacier 10 feet below the col but no other running water after the first stream. Unless you are planning on doing both Chianti and Burgundy, don't bivy, just do it in a day.