[TR] Kangaroo Temple - 1942 Route - North West Face 8/10/2016

[BootsandPants]

Trip: Kangaroo Temple - 1942 Route - North West Face

 

Date: 8/10/2016

 

Trip Report:

After bailing off of more ambitious plans due to the weather, Jen, Cal, and I decided to go check out the route Fred and Helmy put up on Kangaroo Temple back in 1942. None of us had ever been over that way, the route seemed somewhat obscure and not often climbed (bonus points imo), and with promise of sustained 5.7+-ish climbing sounded like a fun day out. Plus, I always think it's kind of cool to climb these old routes and try to imagine what it was like being at this same place 60+ years ago for Fred to be forging out into the unknown.

 

Took us about 1:45 of leisurely ambulation to get to the start of the route, which was kind of tricky to find. Basically the first pitch looks like this, so go until you find it:

 

 

The first pitch was a little dumb: a lot of pro-less slab traversing, a bit of downclimbing, followed by wet edges with no pro, but the climbing was pretty easy and the belay was a huge ledge. After that, I thought the climbing was great! Fun moves and the difficulty stayed at 5.7 pretty much the whole time on solid rock.

 

 

I won't describe all of the pitches, just use the topo in the CAG as I found it to be accurate. Be weary about Fred's description of the route, I couldn't correlate much of what he said to what I was seeing, so just use the topo.

 

A photo of the route:

 

We did deviate from the drawn topo after P4 and followed what is marked as the "original finish". Everything above P4 looked real loose and gritty, stone akin to the rotten block on Liberty Crack.

 

The original finish isn't detailed on the topo, so what we did was traverse left across the "dance platform" and into a rightward facing open book feature. Go up that thing on sporadic jams and stems until you get to a big sandy ledge, belay off of a tree, then unrope and scramble to the summit from there.

 

It took us about three hours to climb the route. A competent group could do it much faster though as we were having some long "learning moments" (aka clusterf#@k management) as it was Cal and Jen's first time using double ropes. It's good to learn new things!

 

We passed by a group of Mountaineers who were coming up the north face route on our way to the summit, and enjoyed the sunshine and views for a time. This area is always so beautiful and I constantly tell myself I need to climb here more!

 

 

 

 

After playing "name that peak" for a spell, we figured we'd get on the rap line before the mounties got all their ducks herded. Two single rope raps off of nice three bolt anchors gets you down to a nice little ledge where you can easily scramble back down to the notch. There's also a bunch of tat at that ledge too in case you're not feeling up to the 4th class scramble.

 

Back to the packs and the car and some nice warm beer to cap off the day!

 

I'm not sure if this'll work, but these new 360 pano shots are really cool! Cool Pano

 

I'm surprised this route doesn't get that much traffic. The climbing is all on good rock and sustained 5.7 throughout all of the pitches. An easy approach and good tree belays along with good gear make this great for newer climbers looking to hone their skills and avoid the crowds on the area's other moderates or experienced climbers looking for something a little different with low commitment.

 

Gear Notes:

Single rack to 2" should do it. Maybe a few extra small/finger sized cams. Long slings help a bunch.

 

Approach Notes:

Park at hairpin, follow trail over Kangaroo Pass. Look for a faint path that trends rightward when your a bit below the Temple-Finger notch.