[TR] Sherpa - NorthRidge 9/14/2008

[Val Zephyr]

Trip: Sherpa - NorthRidge

 

Date: 9/14/2008

 

Trip Report:

Last weekend Ben and I headed to Sherpa Peak for an ascent of the north ridge. A few small events added up to turn this trip into what felt like my first epic adventure in the mountains. This was also, Ben’s first alpine rock climb. What an intro to alpine rock!

 

Our first view of Sherpa

 

Arriving at camp

 

Sunday morning we left camp at 7:30, confident that we would have plenty of time to make it back to camp before dark.

 

We were at the start of the route by 9 am. We started off with two pitches to gain the ridge. The first pitch was just an unprotected run up the slab. The second was a cool chimney with some run-out friction moves.

 

First two pitches went up the left-hand side of the gully. Then we simulclimbed the sandy ledges until more climbing led to some rope-drag issues.

 

We ended up taking considerably longer on this lower portion than we had anticipated. The pitches always seemed to turn several corners causing major rope-drag. We ended up pitching out most of it because of this. The pitches were also often shorter than a full rope-length because of rope-drag.

 

Here is a pic looking up at the lower portion of the climb (with the summit in the background). The route climbs up and over the top of this spire and to a rap station on the other side.

 

We reached the rap station at 4pm (far later than I had expected). We had 5 pitches to the summit and pressed on.

 

Looking back at the last spire before the notch

 

The first pitch was a fun knife-edge traverse

 

The next pitch cost us a lot of daylight. So, I apparently can’t judge how steep the angle of a pitch is going to be when looking at it straight on and I went up a crack that I saw from the end of the traverse pitch that looked mid-fifth. I ended up having to pull through some very difficult mossy moves and finally had to aid the last move to get over the top. The route goes left of this and is much easier.

 

The good news though, is that after this, the crux pitch seemed easy, solid and fun! I don’t know why it has such a bad reputation.

 

We raced the setting sun on the last two pitches (easy fifth)

 

And summitted after dark

 

Now for the epic descent………

 

We rapped off slings to the SW under a full moon.

 

Everything felt more sketchy in the dark. We didn’t find the second set of rap slings from the bottom of the rappel and were a bit apprehensive to pull the rope until we were sure that we were in the right spot. Once we found another horn that we could rappel from we tried to pull the rope. It got stuck twice. UGH! We finally freed it, and rapped/downclimbed further until we reached the second station. Relieved that we were in the correct couloir, we rapped again.

 

We saw a slot notch to the east, we went through that and wandered along the ridge as best as we could, often getting stuck by the imposing cliffs of the many rocky ribs that we were trying to cross and never feeling sure that we were on route. We eventually gave up trying to descend with just moonlight and decided to backtrack to the last point we were certain of the route, the bottom of the second rappel. Along the way back, winding up and down steep gullies and ribs, we stumbled upon a perfectly level, sandy platform perfectly sized for a two person bivy. Without a moment’s hesitation we dropped packs and waited for daylight.

 

Navigation was easier the next morning, but still not entirely straight-forward. After getting all the way back to the base of the second rappel and searching all around, we decided that the slot notch to the east was the way to go after all, so we set out once again following the tracks we had made six hours earlier. The descent crosses very many sandy gullies and rocky ribs, each time losing a hundred feet or so down a gully, before climbing a hundred feet back up to cross the next rib. Overall the route stays mostly near the top of the ridge, but on the South side until reaching Sherpa-Argonaut pass.

 

We relaxed, re-hydrated and hiked out.

 

As we were celebrating our climb in the Leavenworth Beer Garden, we found out that Ben’s wife had alerted S&R and the Sheriff’s office of our late return and a helicopter had been rerouted to look for us! Holy Crap! Ben called the search off and we finally made our way back to Seattle.

 

Despite the unplanned events of this trip, I thought that the route and over-all experience were spectacular! The moonlight bivy at 8000’ was surreal. The route itself really does deserve more ascents, but I doubt that it will ever be very popular because of the bushwhack approach and the tedious descent.

 

Thanks Ben for being a solid partner during all of the unplanned challenges of this trip. And Thanks Molly (Ben’s wife) for watching our backs in case something did actually go wrong.

 

[scottgg]

Sounds like a swell trip!