[TR] Ingalls Peak - E Ridge 8/14/2010

[pac man]

Trip: Ingalls Peak - E Ridge

 

Date: 8/14/2010

 

Trip Report:

Long trip report can be found here

 

We headed up to Ingalls to give the full E Ridge a try.

 

Our path (Blue: partial E Ridge of E Peak, Green: Descent down Dike Chimney, Red: E Ridge of N Peak, Orange: Descent down S Ridge of N Peak)

 

To make a long story short, we tried to climb the entire E Ridge of Ingalls E Peak and N Peak, but rappeled Dike Chimney after trying to scope a path for the remainder of the E Ridge of E Peak. Not sure if it was the angle from being slightly north of the ridge line, but what we saw was a steep "ridge"/face with little protection that could potentially take a long time to scout a path and due to its reportedly slightly loose nature, we bailed in favor of at least climbing the E Ridge of N Peak. Upon further inspection, we probably needed to make an easy southwardly traverse to easier ground on the E Ridge of E Peak (all photos of the ridge line looked easy, but what we saw did not look the same). Out of 3 cameras we got no pictures of this, probably being distracted by "John Tesh", apparently a shy alpine creature last spotted on the E Ridge of E Peak. Keep a lookout.

 

After an interesting descent of Dike Chimney's left side (climber's left), we made our way over to E Ridge of N Peak, having a great time on easy rock with a nice position. I'm not sure I would call it exposed as that usually brings visions of 500+ ft shear drops below me, but there was a nice sense of easy technical alpine ridge climbing with little apprehension.

 

Our route on E Ridge of N Peak to the best of my knowledge

 

Crux (Green: probably best path to follow, Red: crack I originally chose, Orange: Branch I took after bailing on Red route)

 

The only concerning section was the crux, where confused by some beta of staying center, I'm not sure we climbed the correct crack, and if we did, a #3 was a scary piece to protect this awkward section, though the route we climbed required a fairly large step onto a protectable but eery sounding block. With a #3.5 or #4 our original route (red route) would have been preferable, but I should not have ignored the green route.

 

A quick jaunt over the summit and rappel down the S Ridge brought us back to the ground where we made a quick descent back to the car.

 

Gear Notes:

*Light rack for E Ridge of N Peak

*1 60m rope (since we didn't simul-climb turned out to increase the length of the E Ridge of N Peak to 4 hours with ~9ish <100ft leads). I would imagine pitching it out and being able to climb >100ft leads would result in a 2 hour climb time, and a 1.25 hour climb time simul-climbing.

 

Approach Notes:

Usual for Ingalls Lake

[kukuzka1]

did that traverse and dike chimmney was the crux. scary. we traversed just before the top of the chimmney via some fun stuff

[pac man]

Did you end up traversing to climber's left after exiting Dike Chimney?

 

I would imagine lower Dike Chimney would be an awful funnel for the crap from above, or at least the left side. Scary!

[kukuzka1]

yes, at a bulge/overhang near the top of the chimmney i led a fairly fun pitch out left[climbers]and up, then pretty much headed towards the summit[sw]. it was a fun combo other than the chimmney [more of a narrow gully]we climbed right next to each other[no rope]so we wouldnt knock stuff down on each other

Edited August 20, 2010 by kukuzka1

[Mr. Hands]

Used horses to ease the approach once. Highly reccomended!