[TR] Argonaut Peak- Northwest Arete 6/24/2006

[counterfeitfake]

Climb: Argonaut Peak-Northwest Arete

 

Date of Climb: 6/24/2006

 

Trip Report:

I headed up to Argonaut Peak for an outing in the intermediate climbing class I'm taking. The weather couldn't have been better and the climb was excellent.

 

The four of us got a leisurely start on Saturday morning, hitting the Colchuck Lake/Stuart Lake trailhead at 10:30 am. Followed the trail for a couple miles and when a meadow opened up, we got our first view of our objective.

 

 

Continued on the trail until around 4600 feet, where previous trip reports warned us there was a "faint trail" heading left after the "first switchback". Sure enough, there was the switchback and there was the faint trail. We lost the faint trail almost immediately but would stumble on and off it for the next couple hours. The bushwack wasn't bad, the trail generally follows alongside the creek (just make sure you've got the right creek) and I think if you were really on your toes maybe you could stick to the trail the whole way. After a while the horrid sea of slide alder at the base of Argonaut's northeast face came into view. We said "no thanks" and circled around to the west to where we suspected the real trees met up with the talus. Sure enough. This circumnavigation saved us a lot of pain and probably a lot of time. Onward and upward, around 6,000 feet and 4:00 we realized our bivy options were becoming limited. So we picked out a nice spot on a ridge, across from the coloir that would be our route in the morning, and settled down for a relaxing evening.

 

 

Alarms went off at 4 am, we cooked a little breakfast and headed out. Climbed up the snow gully and were staring at the base of the route by 7 am. Reading Tom Unger's route description, we thought we had a pretty good idea where to go, and it turned out to be clear and accurate the whole way up. The climbing was good, pretty consistent 5.6 or 5.7 on mostly good rock (a little looseness here and there) for 5 pitches. By noon we were on the summit.

 

 

Looking down at our bivy site:

The descent was a little trickier than we had expected, nothing too hard but we had to look and think about it to avoid getting stuck. From the summit we headed east, across the snow field that looks terrifying from below but isn't, and found some rap slings. Rapped a full rope length into a gulley, across the snow to the other side, and another full rope length down to the snow on Argonaut's east side, then some easy walking northeast up the ridge until we could look back down into the valley where our bivy was. We opted to do some chossading down a dirty slope to get on the snow, then fairly easy plunge stepping down to 6,000 feet to retrieve our gear.

 

The way out was hot and tricky in places, with the snow melting out, some snow-bridge-busting shenanigans and a bit of damp granite slab to contend with. It was nice to have the snow, once it's gone (won't be long) it'll probably be talus scrambling the whole way. Once at the bottom, we went out the way we came in, handrailing the creek and walking the trail whenever we could find it. Eventually we hit the Stuart Lake trail, and a couple hours later we were at the car.

 

Total time on the move for Sunday was 17 hours, we definitely weren't keeping a blistering pace but it was a good solid day. This climb has a bit of everything and I highly recommend it.

 

Gear Notes:

ice axe, crampons, rock rack

 

Approach Notes:

a couple miles of trail followed by a couple miles of bushwacking

avoid the slide alder

Edited June 29, 2006 by counterfeitfake

[olyclimber]

Sweet, i was thinking about going up and climbing this sometime this summer. Nice work