[TR] Mt. Garfield - Infinite Bliss 7/4/2015

[Sam Boyce]

Trip: Mt. Garfield - Infinite Bliss

 

Date: 7/4/2015

 

Trip Report:

This is not intended to give any beta on the route or approach (as there are a number of really good pages devoted to this, just do a google search) but rather give an update on the current conditions.

Early morning, got a text from Elliott, he just got off work and is headed my way, sweet that was 3am, a couple hrs earlier than expected. We met at my house in north bend around 4 did some final packing and gear sorting and left the house at around 4:30. So heres the beta with the middle fork road, they are opening it up mid-day Friday with escorts until they wrap up for the day, sat and sun will be wide open and they close midday mon. We arrived at the parking lot around 5:30 and headed up the trail soon after. Trail seems to be pretty beaten in, so it was easy enough to follow. we got the the base around 6:10 and started racking up. After racking up, taking time to locate the first bolt and looking over the topo one last time we headed up the wall around 6:30. We simuled the lower slab (the anchor that was damaged was actually anchor number one, unless we missed anchor number one on the way up and down, I put a new quicklink and chain on but wasn't able to remove the broken one without any tools, other than that the rest of the gear on the climb seems to be in ok condition), pitched out the 9 through the 10b then simuled the 5.0 bit. After the pitch with 2 bolts make sure to follow the ramp shooting off to the right, you'll be aiming toward a fairly large bush with slings. I went straight up putting us off route, I was able to sling some trees and keep us tethered to something for most of it, but we ended up in some pretty loose rock. I kept going until the slab came to the headwall and belayed off some bigger trees, I then headed up over a little bulge and did a bit of an airy unprotected traverse and boom, back on route. We even skipped the 5.8 pitch, hrm, that was weird, but we kept pushing on to the summit. I think we were on the summit around 2, we had plenty of time until dark so we hung out for probably around an hour and started rigging for the rappel. We were at the base sometime around 5.30-6 and enjoyed our first shade of the day since around 10am. We leisurely packed up after drinking some run off water and headed back to north bend. All in all, the crux for us was definitely the heat, we should have packed more on climb water than we did. All the gear seems to be good to go, I didn't notice any other broken quicklinks. The tat on the bush in the middle of the 5.0 could probably use replacement soon, from what I could tell there was one solid piece and a number of sun-faded pieces. Super fun climb, if you leave early enough you can for the most part beat the heat, highly recommended (just remember that it is an alpine climb and should be respected as such, the 5.0 is quite runout on less than ideal rock quality).