[TR] Southern Pickets- E Ridge Inspiration (Epic!) and W Ridge McMillan 8/24/2005

[goatboy]

Climb: Southern Pickets-E Ridge Inspiration (Epic!) and W Ridge McMillan

 

Date of Climb: 8/24/2005

 

Trip Report:

Spent 5 days in the Southern Pickets with my pals Gaston and Fajgha ("Dave").

 

It was a magnificent trip under clear blue skies, complete with exhilarating successes, knife-edge traverses on clean granite, sweeping ridgelines, and full-on grovelling on steep loose terrain in the darkness. Read on for the epic . . .

 

8/24 - Day One: Left Mazama and drove to trailhead, pausing to eat a morning bratwurst at the Newhalem Store around 8 AM or so. Dave loses his wallet between the store and the trailhead, somehow, so has to drive back to the store looking for it -- it never turns up, so undaunted, he shoulder his pack and heads out onto the well-defined trail up Goodell Creek. The Nelson description is excellent, and we found the trail to be very manageable (though steep and relentless for 5000 feet or so). Felt a lot like the hike up Eldorado Creek, to me . . . Arriving at the "heather benches" Nelson mentions, we gained our first good look at the Peaks of the Southern Pickets:

 

 

That night, we made our plans and opted to attempt the West Ridge of Inspiration, to avoid having to carry over gear, and also to assess the state of the glacier, the approach, etc. We also figured that being a party of three, we would be wise to start with the less-ambitious W Ridge rather than the longer, more challenging E Ridge...

 

8/25 - Day Two: Left camp at 7 AM and found our way past the glacial lake and up onto the slabs below the Terror Glacier. Soon, we made our way onto the Glacier:

 

 

It was very broken up, and the occasional serac would whoompf or collapse. We found the bergschrund to be impassable, and soon realized that we would be unable to get onto the West Ridge as we hoped . . . this lead us to (impulsively) decide to climb the East Ridge instead, despite our relatively late start for that particular route. We noted (and agreed) that we were being both impulsive and ambitious, but the weather was so good we felt compelled to commit, despite the factors stacked against us.

 

Looking up at the South Face of Inspiration, East Ridge on Right Skyline (we climbed the gully to gain the notch on the East Ridge):

 

 

I took the first lead (60 meters of low fifth) and after a long simulclimbing pitch brought us to the notch, where Dave lead out:

 

 

Soon, we arrived at the base of the steep and strenuos layback, which Gaston dispatched of very efficiently, even with his full pack:

 

 

Following Gaston, suddenly we arrived at a heart-stoppingly beautiful pitch, which I wanted but Dave got!

 

 

Here is Gaston following Dave's lead and helping free up the pack which Dave is hauling:

 

 

 

 

Looking across from the belay ledge, the SE Glacier on Fury stared back at us:

 

 

This pitch gave way to easier terrain, where I again took the lead and we simul-climbed for a long ways traversing towards the summit:

 

 

Dave took over as the summit came into view:

 

 

Summit shot as the sun is fading - Gaston, Fajgha, Goatboy:

 

 

We located the first of 6 rappels as the golden sunset poured over the Cascades:

 

 

At this point, we knew we were in for it as the rappels became increasingly hard to locate in the fading late. We ended up chasing rappel anchors down the "Bowling Alley" gully pictured here (courtesy of RAD's photography skills):

 

 

Long story short: We made it back to camp at 4 AM after many hours of rappelling, building new rappels, downclimbing manky choss in the gully, sending large loose blocks down, dodging shrapnel from above, and traversing way West on the Glacier to gain the slabs far from where we started . . . It was a very long and wonderful day with two great partners in a wild and alpine place.

 

8/26 - Day 3: Slept in and rested, ate, drank

 

8/27 - Day 4: Climbed W Ridge McMillan (Will add photos later)

 

8/28 - Day 5: Hiked out and went to Twisp Brewpub for

 

Larger size photos in my gallery:

 

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showgallery.php?ppuser=298&cat=500

 

 

Gear Notes:

2 50 meter 8.5 mm ropes

Single Cams to 3" - should have had doubles of 1, 2, and 3 for the Crux pitch!

Axe, Crampons

 

Approach Notes:

Dry approach

Terror Glacier difficult to navigate!

 

I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM OTHERS WHO HAVE DESCENDED THE WEST RIDGE WHAT THEY THOUGHT ABOUT THE ESTABLISHED RAPPEL ROUTE, overall position and quality of the rap stations, etc.

Edited September 8, 2005 by goatboy

[ashw_justin]

When we decended the W ridge, we followed the ridge down to the first col (4 30m raps or something?), then scrambled back over to the S face, where we found some tat slung around a precarious-looking block. From there is was three raps down vertical rock face before reaching more moderate ground, at the apex of the south buttress. There was some down-scrambling on the buttress, and a couple more rapels to reach the glacier. The last part of which we didn't do until the next day, having decided to bivy on some nice little ledges at the top of the buttress, due to darkness (we summitted at 4pm, having started up the initial steep trail around 5am). (Luckily we had brought all of our bivy gear with us on the climb--which was extra-fun in the S face chimney pitches.)

[chucK]

Nice job! Getting up through that glacier is interesting eh? How did you guys get up there (see other recent inspiration report thread )?

 

I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM OTHERS WHO HAVE DESCENDED THE WEST RIDGE WHAT THEY THOUGHT ABOUT THE ESTABLISHED RAPPEL ROUTE, overall position and quality of the rap stations, etc.

 

We descended as ashw_justin. We had only one rope and there seemed to be plenty of rap stations with good webbing. Lucky for us as we forgot our knives at our packs and we had carried just two long pieces of webbing.

 

The descent description from Kearney or Nelson says something like, "possible to descend down 600 foot steep face from slabs". Sounded sort of scary, but we found a big block with many slings and rings and launched over the edge. We saw one premade station that looked totally screwed (overhung, hanging) within range of our one rope, but found another place where we could stand and build a station. One more single rope rap got us to a heavily engineered station (stoppers, many slings) from which point we continued our downward journey without further complication.

[MCash]

Nice work! That glacier shot looks very interesting. I need to go back up there and finish this route, thanks for providing the "Inspiration" for next year.

[goatboy]

Nice job! Getting up through that glacier is interesting eh? How did you guys get up there (see other recent inspiration report thread )?

 

*********************************************

 

Well, we looked at and started up the apparently easy ice ramp in the other thread (indicated by red arrow below), but ended up climbing the rock outcropping to gain easier snow slopes above, closer to the peak. In this photo, its the obvious rock to the right of and above the red arrow:

 

 

This was straightforward, though two days later we witnessed a serac collapse above, scouring this rock with blocks of ice and snow -- hard to tell if it was right where we were or not, but it was humbling, as these unstable glaciers often can be.

 

As for the descent, we certainly saw the steep South Face descent which y'all mentioned, but it just seemed intuitive to stay in the gully and use the rap stations there (Gaston compared it to the Bedayn Couloir used to descend Goode).

 

Sounds like the other way, while seemingly improbably, may be more straightforward (and perhaps not as loose and chaotic as the gully). I know that the S Face has the best rock on the peak, supposedly . . . Anyone else out there ever descend the gully itself, as we did? How did you find it?

 

By the way, we were VERY close to simply throwing down and waiting the night out on a large grassy ledge near the top of the gully, but figured we'd keep moving as long as we safely could -- glad we did, though it was a LONG night.

[Rad]

Great job on your trip. Epics make for good stories even if they usually involve suffering.

 

Crux pitch: We thought that final steep crack you climbed looked good but we only had one #2 and one #3 camalot so it would have been way run-out. Instead, we traversed 30ft right and found another crack up the wall. It was certainly a spectacular, clean 5.9 hand and finger crack. I don't know which one is the 'real' route. Does it really matter?

 

We too were concerned about the broken Terror glacier and decided to avoid it entirely by doing a mini-Pickets traverse.

 

Pickets Mini-traverse

 

The snow on the approach to West Mac/5 towers col is very mellow. The 5 towers are fun and not too hard (maybe some 5.8 or easy 5th if you bypass certain summits). We found the descent down the W ridge of Ispiration very straightforward to the Pyramid/Inspiration col.

 

We crossed the top 100m of the West Inspiration gully and it was a bowling alley of death blocks. We went one at a time and each set off a shower of rocks from pebbles to refrigerators that exploded down the lower gully. I can't imagine rappeling down that to the glacier.

 

Gully photo

 

The scramble across Pyramid and Degenhart was easy and pretty, or if conditions are favorable you could climb the ridges ala Marko, Colin and Wayne. The traverse to the Barrier and the Chopping Block is pretty straightforward. The Chopping Block NE ridge is a nice, easy line.

 

In short, you can easily avoid the Terror glacier entirely if you have 3-4 days for your trip and are willing to go light and carry over. Going light has the added advantage of a more enjoyable approach.

 

Other photos from our trip include:

 

Terror glacier from Inspiration E ridge

 

Chopping block

 

First of the 5 towers

 

From bivy at the W Mac/5 towers col

[goatboy]

Crux pitch: We thought that final steep crack you climbed looked good but we only had one #2 and one #3 camalot so it would have been way run-out. Instead, we traversed 30ft right and found another crack up the wall. It was certainly a spectacular, clean 5.9 hand and finger crack. I don't know which one is the 'real' route. Does it really matter?

 

 

 

Yeah, we didn't know which route was "right" either, but the left-hand splitter looked so good, we had to try it. We only had one #2 and one #3, and as you predicted, that made it difficult -- but do-able!

 

Were I to go back, I would DEFINITELY take two #2's and two #3's, maybe a big hex. There was a wobbly deathblock hiding halfway up in that splitter which Gaston sent down to the glacier, which will hopefully make it easier (and definitely safer) for future ascents, by the way . . .

 

Nice photos, by the way. God, your photo of the bowling alley looks like we must have been insane to descend it -- good thing it was dark!

[Rad]

Nice work. Maybe you guys did the FA of that crack. Any signs of other travel in it?

 

Glad you made it down the gully safely. Early season (in non-mutant years) that might be nice snow.

[goatboy]

Hmmm.....now that you mention it, no, I don't think there was any fixed gear or signs of previous ascents . . . . though it's so compelling, I'd be surprised if it hasn't been climbed before....