Nice!
Looks like a climb I would love to do sometime.
I've been up the hikers trail, which is of course a highway, and I noticed the turnoff for the creek trail - how is the condition of that trail?
The climbers trail is in good shape, considering it's a climbers trail.. it switchbacks some, has some rock cairns. The lower sections actually resemble a trail. The upper section starting after Upper Boyscout lake is some talus and a bit rougher. But still really nice and trail-like.
TCD said:
You said it's easy to navigate...did you have beta, or a past visit, or can it be navigated in the dark easily by a first timer?
I had the SuperTopo guidebook to go by. It details the approach nicely. There's a few crux route-finding sections.. one being the E ledges and the other just before you get to Iceberg Lake. We got to the E ledges before the sun rose, but we had run into a guy who was on his way to hike up Mt. Russell and he knew the route, being there earlier in the week. So we lucked out and followed him across the ledges, which were really cool.. exposure at night is something else. We talked to a group who had gotten lost trying to find their way around those ledges, but honestly, even not having run into the hiker, I don't think it was that hard to follow.. there were rock cairns at key spots.
The other route-finding crux by Iceberg Lake is also described in the guidebook and easy to figure out.. staying low in the talus field and then finding the weakness in the ridge is easier than keeping high and climbing the often wet slabby rocks. It'll make sense when you see it.
TCD said:
Also, how is finding the start of the route? (Often that's the crux on these routes.) Again, did you have beta, or really good guidebook info? Or was it obvious?
Finding the start of the route was obvious. I had seen pictures of the start online at various sites (mountainproject, summitpost, etc) and once we got there, I spotted it. And we had the SuperTopo guide which I highly recommend.
cbcbd said:
Any other untold parts of the story to divulge? Summit bivy, stumbling in the dark until wee hours of the morning? I've been on some climbing trips where the pics kinda stop after a certain point where the photographic interest cease after some threshold of enjoyment is passed. Looks like you guys entered some "type II" kind of fun on this one.
Hahaha... ohh.. I knew once you read this, you'd pick up on that quickly! Yes, there's more to the tale, as you can tell by the dying light photos where we are clearly not on the summit yet.
We topped out in the dark. Props to my partner who pulled a crux move in the dark, by headlamp with his mountaineering boots on. I had led out for Pitch 9, where I should have easily found some Class 3/4 for us.. the plan was the simul-climb the rest of the route to the summit, but in my anxiousness as the evening was falling, I didn't take enough time and didn't go as far left as I should have.. we continued to encounter Class 5 stuff. On the last pitch (we didn't know it was the last one at the time but were hoping) we got stuck in this corner, it was now totally dark and the only way out was via this hand traverse/no feet over open dark air and around a blind corner. It was really exciting! Jeff got it done and I followed up to the summit.
Now it's 8:00 p.m. the wind had been picking up for the past two hours. We decided to bivy in the summit house. It being unplanned, of course, it was a cold, uncomfortable and sleepless night. Our descent route was the 11-mile hiking trail because the Mountaineers Route was an icy death chute. The "route" looked so miserable even without the ice, I just can't see any appeal to it. There were 4 or 5 people trying to summit via the Mountaineers during the day and they all turned around. We simply didn't want to drag our ***** down 11 miles at night. We were both totally capable and it would have been fine, so it was our choice to bivy up there.
And it was a good choice as we were rewarded with a fanastic sunrise without anyone else around. I spent some time alone on the summit in the morning as Jeff was huddled in the summit house. It was totally worth it to tough it out the night prior. Then we were able to leisurely walk down the hiking trail in the sun and soak in the views.
Now I can say... The End.
