[TR] In a day: Wine Spires, West, Silver Star, Kangaroo - Wine Spires, West Summit, Silver Star, Kangaroo Ri 9/6/2008

[devinejohnny]

Trip: In a day: Wine Spires, West, Silver Star, Kangaroo - Wine Spires, West Summit, Silver Star, Kangaroo Ri

 

Date: 9/6/2008

 

Trip Report:

If this is the first link up of its kind, we would like to call it the Triplett Traverse, to honor Ryan Triplett who likely met his untimely end while we were on the route.

 

 

Abstract: 15 hour day from trailhead to camp with all four Wine

Spires, Silver Star (with the West Summit and the two largest gendarmes along the way), and a long ridge run over to Kangaroo ridge where we crossed a saddle and dropped back to the hairpin. 2 hours to the base of Burgundy Spire and about an hour for each spire there after. 3:30 at the summit of Silver Star. Bypassed most of Snagtoothed ridge on the west side, then regained the ridge and ran it to a saddle in Kangaroo ridge, arriving at 8PM. Back to hairpin turn by 9PM. The most enjoyable part of this day was from Burgandy to Silver Star. The second half was good if you like endless scree and bad rock.

 

Note: for simplicity, I assume that the ridge from Burgundy to Silver Star points from North to South. This is a little off, but allows for an easier descriptions.

 

On Friday 9/5/08 after work Andy Davis, Heather, Sylvia, and I headed up to the Washington Pass area. The ladies had plans for South Early Winter and Liberty Bell, while Andy and I had our sights set on a big link up in the Wine Spires. We rolled into the hairpin turn around 10:30 and racked up over a few beers before getting some shut eye. Andy set three consecutive alarms on his watch: 4:00, 4:01, and 4:02. The trick worked and we awoke early on Saturday to crisp, clear skies. Heather, bless her soul, was nice enough to drive us down the road to the approach for Silver Star, and after a few wrong pull-offs, we were hiking briskly up the trail at 5AM. Headlamps turned off as the sky brightened. Two hours after leaving the trailhead we were on the crest of the ridge below Burgundy Spire.

 

We slipped our climbing shoes on and soloed the first half of the spire until a sandy rightward-trending ramp ended below a wall of steeper rock. We pulled out our 70m 9.8mm rope and Andy led a rope-stretching pitch + about 50 feet of simul climbing. Andy brought me up to a large ledge, where we walked about a hundred feet around to the right. I lead a 50-60 meter pitch, starting up the right side of the face, crossing left past a two bolt anchor, and up through some slimy offwidth to the summit.

 

We rapped south from the summit block into the notch between Burgundy and Chianti. Our 70m rope allowed us to make this in one rappel. Andy led directly up Chianti from the notch on loose rock, passing an old angle and ring piton along the way. This short pitch deposited us at the summit block in good time. The exposed bouldery moves to the summit and back were quite exciting. We also took a second to investigate the remains of a wedding ceremony (congratulations!). Heading across the summit towards Pernod we found some white webbing around a small boulder. I gave it a gentle tug and it ripped apart in my hands. Yikes! We left a green cordelette and were able to rap down to the next notch in one long rappel.

 

Scouting Pernod from the summit of Chianti, it looked like we would need to cross some odd terrain to get through the notch, then follow a chimney to the summit. The notch ended up deeper than expected and I had to lead a terrifically dirty and loose pitch to regain level ground (perhaps .9+, though it was hard to tell with all the digging through lichen and crumbling of rock). As we moved over to the notch, the chimney appeared difficult to reach, and perhaps not the best option. Following intuition, Andy stepped up and around to the left, which was lower angle, but appeared to be blank from the summit of Chianti. Andy was rewarded with a bomber crack splitting the face. He followed this to a ledge in an east facing bowl. It appeared that some people had rapped south from here, but we were set on reaching the summit. Splitting the vertical face from the ledge was a super, though slightly dirty finger crack. Andy tackled this with gusto, sending it with no trouble. I followed up to Andy and we agreed that the finger crack felt like a .10+. I lead one short offwidth pitch to a saddle between the large summit blocks.

 

After a moment of debate, we decided to aid up the two ancient bolts (the lower without a hanger) to reach the proper summit of Pernod. Standing on my tippy toes I was just able to sling a wire nut over the lower bolt, then clip in some slings. Andy headed up first, proudly mantling onto the summit. At the summit there is one knife blade in a crack near the lip with some webbing and a large rap ring. Andy tied through this and lowered back down, leaving a top rope for me to hand-over-hand my way up. After tagging the summit, we returned to the saddle and looked at our rappel situation. There were two weathered, 8mm twin lines already through the rap rings, apparently stuck and abandoned. We pulled them up and used part of one to reinforce the anchor. A single rappel on our 70m put us in the notch between Pernod and Chablis. We left one of the twin lines coiled at the base of the rap and took the remainder of the other to use at future rappel stations.

 

Chablis took only a few minutes to solo from the notch, making up for time lost on Pernod. From the summit we began to down climb toward the southeast, switch-backing between ledge systems and occasionally pulling some airy 4th class moves. Between Chablis and the next large section of technical climbing, there is an area with a large, loose pile of rock. We didn’t feel compelled to summit this pile, so we passed it on the east side where the snowfield meets the rock. Once past this section, the rock steepens as it shoots up towards Silver Star. We scrambled up a very loose and scary gully until reaching a large sandy ledge where we could rope up. This face is where the Wine Spires terminate, so I suspect that it has been climbed before, but I wonder if anyone has done the route that Andy picked. He headed out right towards steeper terrain, pulling through a right trending offwidth to a large chimney (which we exited via cracks on the left wall). This pitch stretched our 70m, plus 30 feet or so of simul climbing. Andy belayed me up to a fantastic, level ledge on the ridge leading toward the summit of Silver Star (with 4 distinct gendarmes and the West Summit in between).

 

We worked our way along the ridge, skipping the first gendarme, but hitting the other significant ones. Here the ridge begins to wrap around to the left (east), creating a bowl where the Silver Star glacier sits. Most features can be passed on this side of the ridge if difficulties become too great. After the gendarmes we soloed up the West Summit (scary rock) and down the other side into the deep notch between West Summit and Silver Star. There is no technical climbing to the summit of silver star from here, so we dropped our packs, took our climbing shoes off for the rest of the day, and hiked to the top, taking a brief moment to survey our resources, energy, and possible routes. Time: about 3PM.

 

We descended back to the notch between Silver Star and West, then dropped to the south in a steep scree gulley. After a few hundred feet of elevation drop, we contoured to the right and popped through a saddle where Snagtooth Ridge meets Silver Star. This brought us back to the west side of things, in view of the highway. We decided to skip the technical sections of Snagtooth ridge by dropping west from our saddle until able to traverse south and regain a faint band of trees heading toward the ridge. We ended up having to cross about 7 rock ribs that descended from Snagtooth (similar to the west ridge of Stuart) before we reached the point where the ridge becomes an enjoyable hike.

 

Once on the ridge we were able to light the back burners, gunning our way towards Kangaroo Ridge in the distance. From the summit of Silver Star, this ridge appears to make a lazy lighting bolt, heading to the right, then the left, then right again before terminating at a perpendicular angle with Kangaroo Ridge. The only thing that slowed us down along the way was our gawking at the unbelievable rock faces (hidden from the road) on the northeast side of Kangaroo Ridge. If you think Big Kangaroo doesn’t look like much from the hairpin turn, wait until you see it from the other side. Wow. Think untapped Early Winter Spires, east faces.

 

After a finally, swimming scree climb, we reached the low point in Kangaroo ridge between Big Kangroo and Half Moon. Time: about 8PM. As we descended from here through hundreds and hundreds of feet of loose scree, it became clear why more don’t visit the back side of Kangaroo Ridge. We descended quickly down this slope and soon picked up the trail that heads down the valley to the hairpin. It grew dark and our headlamps returned once again. Somewhere in the last half mile we lost the trail and did some good old adrenaline fueled bush whacking. With Heather and Sylvia already back at the bivy (successful on the South Rib of South Early Winter), we heard our destination before we saw it; there laughs pulled us forward through the brush. We were greeted with warm congratulations and cold beer. God bless. Time: 9PM. Some beer, some water, and a split pot of pasta-tuna-cheddar-feta-olive surprise, and we hit the hay.

 

 

Gear Notes:

9.8mm, 70m rope worked well for the raps from the spires.

Set of nuts.

Set of cams up to #4, doubles in select sizes.

12 light runners with biners.

 

[ivan]

layton covered all that ground ont he vasiliki ridge traverse, right?

 

nice jorb!

Edited September 11, 2008 by ivan

[olyclimber]

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/493286/fpart/1

 

 

looks like, but regardless a great effort. thats a lot of climbing!

[Andy_Davis]

As usual, Johnny, my favorite partner in crime comes through with a great TR. Thanks Buddy. Too bad both of our cameras were out of commission otherwise there would be some sweet pics as well.

Looks like we were not the first and hopefully we will not the last to experience that sweet ridge link-up. Thanks for the info Porter. Our route differed in many ways including direction of travel but we had the same classic section of climbing from Burgundy to Silver Star that I would recommend to others. Great climbing up to amazing summits with good exposure and many choose your own adventure route options.

[layton]

Hell of a day!

[MarkAllen]

Nice to see you in this neck of the Woods Ryan and good work!

To answer your query of this being the first of its kind see thread bellow.

Shit Layton your so humble?

 

Silver Star Massif Complete traverse info: CC.Com

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=493256

 

A Ridge to Far " Full Silver Star Continuous Traverse ": NWMJ -Childs

http://www.mountaineers.org/nwmj/06/061_SilverStar2.html

 

enjoy!

 

-ma