Jupiter cliffs?

[Alpine_Tom]

Looking at the Olympic Mtns Climbing Guide, I noticed they say that Mt. Jupiter has a 5.5 route up it called the Jupiter Cliffs. Anyone have any experience with that? Is it worth heading over to give a try?

[bremerton_john]

This TR by Harold Pinsch was forwarded to me. He passed away a few years ago. I'll see if I can find out the year of this climb. It really captures the essence of sketchy Olympic climbing. Good stuff.

 

John

 

 

 

[catbirdseat]

What does II F4 mean? From the description it is a Grade III, low fifth class.

Edited June 5, 2007 by catbirdseat

[mattp]

The II is the grade rating, same as it ever was. F4 is, if I remember correctly, 5.2 or thereabouts. The "F" ratings paralleled the 5.x ratings as you moved up toward 5.9, but F1 was like grade two or something.

[OlympicMtnBoy]

I love cc.com for this sort of stuff! Thanks for posting that John. I'd be interested to know the year. Anyone wanna give it a go?

[bremerton_john]

We're thinking it was probably 1967.

[Fairweather]

I think "Jupiter Cliffs" are what I saw through a brief break in the clouds yesterday from the top of Mount Townsend. (?)

 

[Jamie]

Finding the Cliffs apparently has been a problem and that is why, I'm told, it is not in the more recent editions of the climber's guide. I did find it (10/21/98) and if you are interested in my somewhat rambling description from my journal I would be happy to share it.

[bremerton_john]

Sure, I'd like to know what you found. Thanks. John

[Jamie]

Notes on Jupiter Cliffs from my journal. sorry about the rambling on here. And, I don't know that I still have the pictures.

It seems like the cliffs would be easy to find. In winter you can see them through the trees from the trail near Little Hump. It just seems that way.

Two of us left parking lot at Duckabush Trailhead 8:30.

The trail really does not go over Little Hump. It is just below and north of the true Little Hump Summit. The trail climbs up and levels out at what the hike book calls Little Hump. The level area is not very long. From the middle or east of middle of that flat area take a true north bearing and go up a slope that soon appears to be a bit of a wooded broad ridge (i.e, down sloped on both sides). But this minor ridge-like knoll soon drops down to a minor valley. Go down the small valley and up the other side maintaining a north bearing. Very soon, perhaps 10 or 20 minutes from the trail, you will come upon an obvious old overgrown roadbed. Follow the roadbed (left, NW?), dodging brush, walking around trees and over logs. The old roadbed comes to a place where a creek stream is immediately adjacent to it. (picture 1) At this point, 10:00, we took a break. The roadbed may have looked even worse beyond this point and the other side of the creek appeared to be a bit more open. So we crossed the creek and slanted up the hill, now no more than 150 feet from the creek. We paralleled the creek until we could nothear it any longer (passed the source?) and maintained a heading between true N and Mag N. It wasn't too long before we came to another roadbed (we thought it was the same roadbed, but when we tried to return on it we realized it was not). We followed this roadbed more west than north. Walking was good, it was not steep, and easy to follow. At the W end of this roadbed we found it petered out. To the right you will see the first significant near vertical rock forms and a waterfall of 50 feet or more on the rock. We stayed to the R of the first rock face and worked our way up, then back L toward the waterfall. We made some uncertain moves on soft moss on dirt on rock that made poor holds. We found a ledge at 1500 feet and had a spectacular view across the entire valley while we had lunch. (picture 2) We reached the ledge at 11:15, that is , 2 hours and 45 minutes from the trail head. Zero degrees Centigrade, 11-22-2003. We could not descend the rock we had come up (no rope), so we made our way east and sort of down-climbed and butt-slid on moss and held on to trees to descend into the wood. We tried to follow the second roadbed all the way back to the first but that did not work at all and so we peeled off using the trail and the Duck R. as an east-west baseline to shoot for by traveling mainly S. Because our easting on the second roadbed we came out well below and well east of Little Hump. Toward the end of this bushwhacking we came upon a fair sized creek that we followed down to the trail.

 

Conclusion, I an guessing that much of the "rock climbing" is difficult due to brush and moss and loose rock. Getting to the summit of Jupiter from this side would be arduous at best. But then again, we did not get very high. We felt lucky to find the cliffs at all.

 

[Jamie]

Townsend is directly N of Mt. Jup. How is it possible to see Jup Cliffs from Mt. Townsend? It seems to me that they are nearly 12 miles away and the cliffs are on the southern flank of Mt. Jup. It might be possible, but I recall that Jup has a pretty good east-west ridge that would hide the cliffs. Hmmm...

Edited June 30, 2007 by Jamie

[Fairweather]

I guess you're right. It was so foggy that I was pretty turned around, and with such a nice trail to follow I never did the bearing. So what was I looking at? Northwest, I believe. Those slabs look pretty nice.