Early Morning Spire, SW Face

[climbingjosh]

Anyone been on Early Morning Spire recently? Looking for approach info... probably via Eldorado creek. Many thanks!

[mneagle]

I climbed it a few weeks ago. We approached by the Eldorado/East Ridge route. From the pass at 7200' descend left to the glacier pass, passing an enormous crevasse on the right side. At the bottom of the pass between Eldo and Dorado Needle there is a steep snow wall that we had to cut steps in. We descended the right side of the glacier without too much trouble. There isn't an obvious way to traverse across, so we just bushwhacked across the heathery slope until we reached a talus field and could finally see the spire. The snow field starts out gently but gets a little steep higher up. The moat was a little scary to cross; we set up a snow anchor and belayed across it to a small ledge where we de-cramponed and started climbing. Nelson's route description is pretty weak. Becky's is much better, which shows the 5.8 lie-back exiting right followed by a wide crack up the the large ledge where the 5.9 starts. It's a pretty short crux and protects well with a small stopper. Once you are on the upper ledges, traverse way right to a nice little stance just to the right of a steep, clean 10' crack to a ledge before the arching finger crack. The descent description by Nelson was fairly worthless. It says something about going north to easy downclimbing, but since it didn't say descend to the obvious col, we were confused where this easy downclimbing is supposed to be. Becky implies there is a route up from the col, so I assume this is what the correct descent is. We ended up rapping down the face, setting up very marginal anchors, one of which failed, but not until the 3rd inspection. Once on the glacier, it's a long descent down to a point where we followed a stream down the steep cliff band along the left side of the glacier. From there it's a long climb back through the passes to inspiration glacier. The rock climbing was pretty good, but it's a approach and descent that really stand out in my mind. If I was going to do it again, I may consider a bivy below the snowfield leading to the spire, unless you're really fast. Good luck.

Anyone else out there have an easier time getting down?

[Ben]

I did it a few years ago, after an early-season snow storm, in late Sept.

The descent is funky -- we rapped onto

the unnamed glacier behind the spire,

and traversed it NE to the col and dropped

into a gully which lead to the glacier

which drops you back into Marble ck. cirque.

For more info, see:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/dugan/trips/early-morning.html

It's a great climb -- have fun.

 

[forrest_m]

early morning spire sits a little in front of the main dorado needle ridge, connected to it by a ridge sort of thing. We scrambled from the summit northwards to a saddle, then did a short rap on the north side (there were fixed slings) onto snow, then kept going around the top of a steep bowl and back *up* a steep snow gully up to the main dorado needle ridge. We turned right and followed the ridge south/west for perhaps 100 yards, untill the slope on the far side began to mellow a bit, then downclimbed straight down steep snow for one ropelength before beginning to traverse lower angle snow to the eldo/dorado needle col. This descent was a bit hairy, but much, much faster than any of the descents on the marble creek side, getting us to camp in around an hour from the summit.