Inspiration Peak

[Smoker]

Got back from the Pickets last week. First day we attempted Inspiration via the west ridge/gulley route.

We got shut down in the gulley. It is by far the loosest climbing I have ever attempted. The gulley is listed as the standard descent by both Becky and Nelson (he even claims it to be moderately popular) but the webbing we found on the rap blocks at the top suggest otherwise. The newest webbing was low at the first 2 rap anchors, maybe 8 years old but at the top the webbing must have been 15 or more years old.

So what I want to know is, has anyone here done the gulley approach?

The climbing out of Terror glacier onto Degenhardt was fantastic. We finished via the east ridge with 1 pitch of rope work in the low 5th. The rest was loose 4th with outstanding exposure.

The climbing was great. The weather was poor most days.

Smoker

[AlpineK]

So is there brand new webbing on the decent now? I may be headed there and would like to know.

[Smoker]

E-mail me Alpine, and I'll give ya the poop

S

[Tod]

I was in there about 10 years ago. The route up was problematic until we figured out that we needed to head left out of the gulley part way up. Other than that, it went fairly easy. Once we hit the west ridge proper we did the Class 3-4 variation on the north face.

On the decent, we did run into loose rock problems, but that was because we were rappelling during a torrential downpour that involved rappelling through newly formed waterfalls. I had to dodge a couple of suitcases mid-rappel..... Our decent route was a direct decent down the gulley rather than following our ascent route up the left (west) side (outer face) of the gulley.

Tod