Admittedly I haven’t been getting out enough. Frisbee tournaments, mountain biking, and rough weather have been great excuses but with great weather for the weekend, Cole hit me up about doing something. As with many times this summer, the enchantments looked enticing so for the nth time , we rallied in leavy to feast on some overpriced brats before heading to the most crowded forestlands I’ve ever seen. We were driving by 05:00 the next morning and arrived to a swarm of humanity. I got stuck in the lot for a few minutes but by 05:45, we were hiking.
The colchuck trail never gets better and I think this was the worst time I’ve had on it. We kept a chill pace but still somehow found ourselves keeping a similar pace to a group of trail runners. Trail runners may have been a stretch, it takes more than a salomon adv skin 12 to call yourself a runner. Once we got onto stuart lake trail, the hike became much more pleasant and we soon found ourselves at mountaineers creek. The last time Cole had taken this, we’d struggled through the cairned talus field traverse together so he was pleasantly surprised by the nice forest walk along the creek. Once at the fork in the creek, we crossed the two creeks and made a shitty bushwack upward. The trick here, as we’d learn on the descent, is to cross a log onto the dividing piece of land at the fork in the creeks, then you can continue upward and eventually cross the second creek.
We continued up forest, never finding a true path. Once we hit the talus, we followed the beta of going into the trees to the right. While this avoids slide alder, it’s still quite a pain. Eventually we reached the slightly more open talus field, where a thousand-ish feet of talus divided by waterfall slabs lead us to the snowfield. For the cliff band in the middle, there is an easy line to the left of the steep(possibly walkable) slab on the right side. Just take the little ridge of dirt and continue straight up. Also, there was running water for us right below the snowfield so don’t carry up 3 liters from the valley like we did.
Given that we didn’t bring crampons, we decided to take the smaller gully to the right instead of the central snow-filled gully. After some sketchy ice-traversing with just axes, we started up the super loose gully. It felt decent for a while until I unleashed a massive table sized flake and a second 3 foot diameter boulder. This got our hearts pumping and we soon reached an impassable slab, especially with just our approach shoes. First we ventured right, but it didn’t lead anywhere. Still pumped up after the massive rockfall, we went left, where Cole lead a runout 5.8R line out of the gully. From here it was soloing up the side with a few nerve-wracking moves that eventually brought us to a secondary gully going left out of the main gully. Cole lead it up to a tree, where we unroped after a short exposed slab and scrambled up heather and larches to the ridge. Our nerves finally settled here and after some beautiful ridge traversing, we reached the base of the normal route.
I started the first pitch of the arete with a long simul block. The carl P topo map seemed to be pretty accurate. To start, you climb barely over the gully to the ingalls creek side, where there’s a nice belay stance by a tree. I climbed through the tree and though decent holds to an easy corner. It’s a pretty ledgy climb and from there, easy terrain lead to a steeper face, where a rightward traverse on ledges lead to amazing jugs to the top. From there, I pulled myself over a block and found a nice terrain belay at the large easy ledge below the right facing corner that starts P4. Cole was feeling pretty tired from the climbing so we decided to pitch out the rest since we had made good time.
Cole climbed the corner and then headed up to the right side of a mini great-gendarme looking thing. This was some great climbing and put us on the right side of the ridge. From here I climbed up 15-ish feet before traversing right to a gully which I climbed up. I’m pretty sure the correct route takes the smaller, second rightmost gully to easy ground. It still worked out though, with me climbing more right and onto the summit ridge, where a tiny knife-edge brought us to the end of the rope work. From here, we dropped our packs at an obvious bivy site and romped up to the summit.
After some nice summit views, we went back down to the bivy where we saw the comet and enjoyed the sunset views of argonaut and sherpa. It’s cool to have done the four peaks that surround the valley and definitely makes me feel fortunate. With an early sunset, we settled in for the night.
Eleven hours later, I started the morning by scraping ice off my bag. After many groans and grunts, we got moving. A short downclimb brought us to the snowfield, where we melted some snow and easily found the rappel anchors at the gap in the ridge. We replaced most of the anchors and cut out the old tat, though Cole did end up having to lead back up one rappel after the rope got caught. The rappels brought us down to flat ground, where we climbed back up the ridge and then descended a gully one-by-one until we reached the open talus field, where we hiked down to the water-fall slabs and rappelled.
From here, it was more talus field descent. With a better view of the route down, we decided to descend the talus fields to the right, and after a short yet heinous bushwack, we emerged to cairns. From here, there is a faint trail that abruptly stops in places. We crossed the creek about two thirds of the way down, and enjoyed a relatively straightforward descent down to mountaineers creek. Once at the creek, we walked along it a little to far but eventually found our way and by 02:45, we were back at the trailhead. All in all, it was a great little trip. The alternative gully we took definitely satisfied the gnarliness requirement and I’ll never get over the beautiful larches and mountain views.
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