Mountaineers Route (III 5.9)
[Post Script: Now as I write this at school, there's no place I'd rather be than high over that lake on a summer day, surrounded by majestic peaks.]
a beautiful summer day.
Back To Dan's Basecamp
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| Elephant's Perch, Mountaineers Route (III 5.9) |
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| Above: Elephants Perch from the approach trail. The route climbs the center of the visible rock, and by-passes the diamond shape to the left. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Waking up after sleeping in the dirtbag, free camping across the highway from Red Fish Lake, we roll out of bed and make the short drive to the marina. At the dock, we see a sign for the boat shuttle with times listed. Following Ben's interpretation we think the earliest you could leave was 8:00 A.M., so we go town for some coffee. Returning to the dock we learn you could leave at anytime after dishing out 20 bucks for a boat ride. The boat ride was certainly worth the money as we were now several miles on the other side of the lake, closer to our objective. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Above: Ben leading our second pitch, (pitches 3 & 4 on the topo) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The approach is uninteresting with the exception of spectacular alpine vistas and a subtle trail. Through the trees we catch glimpses of a golden sheet of rock looming overhead. Soon we're on 3rd class scrambling finding a good way to the base of our route. The base of the route is obvious as the route starts in a deep chimney. The dark, deep chimney doesn't look to appealing so I lead on the face just to the left of the feature. Pleasurable climbing brings me to the chimney, where I shimmy up it for a few fun moves and it levels off in a ledge above a chockstone. This is the end of the first pitch but with plenty of rope left using 60 M doubles I step left, traversing outside of the chimney with only a small nut as pro for my traverse. The second, short pitch features an easy crack system and ends on a nice ledge with some fixed anchors. It's now Ben's turn to lead and he starts up 75' of a nice layback crack and clips the belay anchors as pro. He continues on, traversing under a roof using underclings. Ben gets to the left side of the roof, finds a weakness and turns the airy but easy (5.7?) moves and sets up a belay right above. I follow Ben's lead and continued up 100 feet of a fourth class through at the bottom of a huge dihedral. I set my belay directly under the distinctive feature of the route, a large light-colored diamond set in relief from the rest of the wall. Ben lets me lead the next pitch, a 5.8 face and crack to the left of the diamond. The pitch is spectacular, starting with slightly run out face climbing and traverses out to an arete. At the arete, I peer down and around at a nearly flawless vertical wall dropping straight down. The rest of the pitch entails good crack climbing to a semi-ledgey belay. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Above: Me on the stellar 3rd pitch. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Above: Ben on easy terrain just above the 5.9 roof | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| My pitch gets us in position to attack the crux, a thin 5.9+ hand/finger crack up a small buttress. Ben leads the nice crack, combining it with the last pitches 5.9 roof to make one long, last pitch. The roof is amazing, as it seems to hang out above the entire route. Blessed with a top-rope I cut my feet loose and hang over the wall from just my arms. At the lip of the roof Ben had placed a bomber blue Tri-cam. Hanging from one arm with flailing feet I try very hard to clean the piece but can't do so without weighting the rope. Ben lets me climb on to the belay and I lower him to the piece where he has no trouble getting it with two hands and a nut-tool. The terrain quickly relents and becomes 4th class with a few 5th class moves between. I lead one rope length above, placing only a few pieces of pro. I set a good belay, bring up Ben and we unrope. More scrambling gives way to the top of the wall, where the actual summit is actually a few hundred feet higher. We decide not to go to the summit and head over to the descent gully. We are forced to descend the dirt and talus gully in our rock shoes. It is slow miserable going, but we finally get to cairns marking a rappel. Ben raps first and goes on ahead to get our stuff at the base of the route, while I stay behind and coil the ropes. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| We meet back up, fill our Nalgene bottles with stream water and start hiking out. The last boat pick-up is at 7:00 P.M. and we see we have enough time to make it, providing we don't dilly-dally. We hike down, going faster as the clock ticks down. It is a few minutes before 7 and we still have a little ways to go to we start running down the trail. We arrive at a boat-less dock, watching the day's last boat speeding off in the near-distance� Well, we don't have too many options are this point besides biting the bullet and hiking out so that's what we do. We are forced to take a trail 5 miles back to the marina, getting back around dark. The first few miles, all I can think about was how angry I am about having to do this. As the miles go by, Ben and I start to talk. Ben takes on a positive outlook on the situation. "We won't ever remember this in a few days," he tells me. He goes on to say that we should be glad to be out doing what we love, instead of being at work or school. Refreshed by this new outlook, I hardly notice the last few miles and am soon at the truck eating ice cream� [Post Script: Now as I write this at school, there's no place I'd rather be than high over that lake on a summer day, surrounded by majestic peaks.] |
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| Above: Dan at the top of the technical climbing on a beautiful summer day. Back To Dan's Basecamp |
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