[TR] Vesper Peak - Ragged Edge 9/12/2015

[petech]

Trip: Vesper Peak - Ragged Edge

 

Date: 9/12/2015

 

Trip Report:

My first post here!

 

Edit: meant to put this in North Cascades region, too technologically inept to change it.

 

We had a blast climbing this route on Saturday. Thanks to dberdinka for setting up the route, it was fun!

 

The approach is pretty well documented in other beta and follows the standard scramble approach up past the lake for a while before cutting towards the north side. You can get water at the stream that drains out of the lake. At this point in the year there are no streams visible going into the lake, so you're drinking lake water (clear and fast flowing, but lake water nonetheless). The approach is pretty straightforward for most people, but I managed to confuddle the team and seriously overshoot the ledges where you cut over to the north side from the standard scramble route. So we downclimbed to about 5700 ft to cut over to the north side. Once at the base we decided to climb a little higher to start the route to make up for lost time. Well, turns out we were not too far from the end of Pitch 1 at that point. We built a belay at the short overhanging wall. From the top of our Pitch 1, Pitch 2 ended up being about 30 ft long. For those two pitches, I placed a grand total of 2 pieces - a #2 and a sling around a flake. I suspect we skipped any spicy parts in our attempt to stay on track time-wise.

 

Pitch 3-6 were much more fun. Pitch 3 is pretty run out. Pitch 3 traverses climber's left, look for the bolt up and to the left near the leftmost skyline to give you an idea of the best direction of travel. Pitch 5's biggest challenge was not thinking about how at any point on the pitch if you fall you're going over a roof. It had a couple of well placed bolts for peace of mind. Definitely good to have prusiks along for this route just in case. Pitch 6 was pure fun, with lots of exposure on the arete.

 

It was a gorgeous day with plenty of people summiting from the scramble side. On the final pitch we had a couple people look down from the summit, notice us and watch us climb and take pictures. It didn't quite add to the alpine experience, but it was pretty novel to climb with a fan club.

 

Gear notes: agreed on what other beta says. We had BD 0.3-#3 with doubles of 0.4-#1. Set of nuts small to large. We used the #3 once (on Pitch 4?).

 

Looking at Pitch 3 from the base:

 

 

Jen at the top of Pitch 5 (loved how this came out, posting sans filters)

Edited September 14, 2015 by petech

[curtveld]

Good stuff! That second photo is awesome and really shows how exposed the upper part of that route feels.

[zoltani]

Yeah, it is a great route and a fantastic summit. Seems to be getting a lot of love this year.

 

I don't remember any significant runouts though.

[petech]

The start of Pitch 3 was probably the worst of it. Guess it might depend on your definition of what is run out, but my friend led Pitch 3-5 and seemed to think 3 was the spiciest due to the runout at the beginning. The rest of it was pretty straightforward pro-wise.

[JasonG]

Pitch 3 is just getting you ready for D-town.

[zoltani]

Eh, I have a poor memory for runouts anyway, they are always best forgotten about.