[TR] Guye Peak - NW Ramp 6/12/2010

[aclark20]

Trip: Guye Peak - NW Ramp

 

Date: 6/12/2010

 

Trip Report:

KaskadskyjKozak, LB, Myself, and 3 new climbers were planning on climbing Clark Mountain this weekend, but the high avy danger forced us to change plans. We decided to attempt the NW Ramp route on Guye peak on Saturday, as a quick day climb, before heading over the pass and spending Sunday in Leavenworth. Everyone we had talked to said it's a mostly scrambling route, with a few fifth class moves near the top. We met at Eastgate P&R in the morning, and were at the bottom of the Talus field by 8am.

 

The approach was fairly uneventful, making decent time up the talus field, but slowed down a bit scrambling wet mossy rock.

 

Pretty painless talus field:

 

KK scrambling up some mossy rock:

 

We made decent time up the "dry" creek bed, which this time of year was a full blown stream. The ramp that cuts left to right across the face was snow covered, so it turned the class 3/4 scramble we were expecting into pleasant kick stepping. At the top of the snow, we roped up for an airy class 4 step around a boulder. I lead out first, KK lead out second, and LB out third. KK managed to knock a microwave sized block off the face, which made a pleasing crack as it bounced of the face before breaking into hundreds of pieces. Luckily no one was below!

 

Heading up the snow ramp:

 

Airy Step around:

 

Once around the boulder, we belayed up a full rope length up a class 3 dirt gully to what's supposed to be the start of the short 5th class pitch. We had no pic's of what the route should look like, so I chose what looked to be the easiest line, and went up. It's supposed to be a few low 5th class moves, followed by some 4th class for approx 60' to a tree, then easy scrambling to the summit. Well, what I went up seemed more than a few low 5th class moves, it was mossy, wet, loose, and dirty, and I was in mountaineering boots... Fred Beckey I am not.... Everywhere I tried to place pro, rocks moved. I had to make a pretty sharp traverse left mid-route, which gave me pretty nasty rope drag by the time I got to the top. My follower had to prusik up beyond the traverse before I could put him on belay. From there, KK lead up, and I tried to continue further on. We were on a broad ledge with a gnarly tree for an anchor, but the ledge and above didn't want to take any pro. It was still low 5th class above, and extremely difficult to protect. We concluded that we must be off route, and the best bet would be to rap off.

 

Me leading up the 5th class pitch:

 

By the time we were all back to the base of the pitch, it was near 4pm. How did it get so late??? We wasted some more time investigating a rappel from the snowy gully below the pitch we climbed, but it was longer than a double rope, we didn't know what was there for an intermediate station. We only had 3 ropes for six people, it wasn't going to work.

 

We down climbed the 3rd class ramp to above the boulder, rappelled down the boulder face, and down climbed the long stretch of snow to the base of the ramp by 8pm.

 

At the base of the ramp, KK found some old rap slings, great! We wouldn't have to down climb the wet waterfall! One double rope rap brought us to another set of slings. We pulled the ropes without issue, and set up the next double rope rap. 2 people successfully down, and the third en route, we hear "Secure the purple rope! The Blue rope is damaged!". He's thankfully at a spot where he can stand, so we quickly threw a clove hitch in the good line so he can safely rappel to the bottom.

 

We decided to take the good rope, pass it through the rap ring, figure eight to a biner, and clip it back to itself. We tied the damaged line to the biner so we could hopefully pull the damaged line to get the good rope back.... essentially a large slip knot. The last 3 of us up there rappelled down the single strand safely to the bottom. But... when we went to pull the rope, it went up about 10 feet and got stuck. At this point, it's pitch black, and around 11pm. No one wanted to risk scrambling up the wet waterfall in the dark, so we made the call to abandon the rope's....

 

Fairly uneventful rest of the way down, one more single rope rappel, some scrambling, and the talus field... back to the cars by 1:30am, 17.5 hrs after we left....

 

Waterfall where the rope's got stuck:

 

We went back up yesterday to retrieve the ropes, a quick scramble up and down in 2 1/2 hours. At this point, we're not sure what caused the rope damage... the rope was near retirement, but none of us noticed any damage while climbing on it that day. Rockfall???

 

Damaged rope section:

 

Photos c/o KK & EH

 

Gear Notes:

Lots of slings for trees!

 

Approach Notes:

Straight forward, class 3/4 wet scrambling up the giant choss pile that is Guye peak.

Edited June 15, 2010 by aclark20

[LostCamKenny]

Damaged rope section:

whoa! exciting - in the wrong way! glad it don't get more epic than that.

[mountainsloth]

yikes! sounds like a shit show.

you seemed to have managed it well though. way to make it back safe.

[ivan]

have you done the improbable traverse route? hardly any difficult climbing and probably more straight forward. don't know about having a dozen folks on it at the same time though, that's quite the mountie's picnic!