[TR] El Dorado and Dorado Needle - East Ridge and NW Ridge 8/1/2007

[powdrx]

Trip: El Dorado and Dorado Needle - East Ridge and NW Ridge

 

Date: 8/1/2007

 

Trip Report:

Me and a buddy "strolled" up El Dorado Creek and into Rosch Basin to a sweet camp at 7800ft on the East Ridge of El Dorado. I was wasted!! That is a long 5700ft and we had food for 5 days. But the great views and some tasty Dehydro helped the recovery process. Thursday, we departed at 8am and headed across the Inspiration toward Dorado Needle. All went well and with some crevasse navagation, we reached the base of the Needle at 10:15. The standard snow ramp was broken in two places, so we needed a new plan. We have a small rack and a 30m rope. We found a decent route up the moat on the right side of the snow ramp and with three small pitches, we were on the ridge proper. Two more pitches and we were on the summit with views all around!! We down-climbed the ridge and then one 15m rap and a little down-climbing got us back to the base at 1:45. Great climb. We followed our steps back to camp and rested for a couple hours. We then trooped up El Dorado for a two-summit day. AWESOME!!!

We had plans for Austera and Primus, but awoke to clouds pouring into the basin. We caught a few sucker-holes, but with more clouds forecasted to come in, we heading out Friday and over to Leavenworth for some fair-weather cragging!! Great weekend and two awesome summits!!

 

Gear Notes:

Basic glacier gear, 30m-9mm rope, 5 cams and a couple pieces of passive gear, aluminum ice axe and crampons (useful the first couple hours in the morning).

 

Approach Notes:

Trail is there all the way up!! But it is a solid hike at 5700 vert!! Glacier travel was good and nothing really tricky presented itself.

[rob]

Cool, I wanted to climb those two as a combo this year, but somehow it never worked out.