Hello,

I am curious as to when you think is the best time to attempt Liberty Ridge? Is it more like a spring climb (April/May) or more of a summer affair (June/July). In your experience when are the conditions most favorable for a enjoyable ascent? Thank you for help

tom

Most people go in late May or early June. The reason is that the Carbon Glacier travel is good (fewer open crevasses) and the route itself up higher will be mostly snow, without too much ice (thus easier). The only problem is that the weather tends to be more unstable.

If you go more mid-summer the Carbon may be more of a problem, the route may have long sections of ice, but in theory the weather will be more stable. As I recall the FA was something like September, but the route is generally in pretty bad shape by then.

I have been on the carbon on May, June and September. Liberty Ridge is probably best done in early to mid June as George described above. I had no problems on the route in June.

Sometimes May can be too early and the approach becomes more of a headache as roads and trails may be closed or filled with deep snow.

I attempted to solo the route in September of 96' or 97' and the carbon was horrible. Below the first prominent rock outcroppings, there was a schrund that was very deep and 20 feet across at the narrow sections, with no good way around it. I tucked my tail and headed for the Emmons Glacier route that trip...

My experience from two trips to LR over Memorial Day is that it is a bit early. This is when the White River (?) entrance usually opens.

Once, we got rained on then stormed on pretty good. The other time, we got high enough, just early enough to look down on the storm that stayed below us. That latter attempt was successful, but had we been a half-day later, we would have been in the storm. As such, we had the upper mountain all to ourselves.

The glacier is just starting to open smaller crevasses at this point. I'm guessing the larger ones don't fill in seasonally... and they are the real deal -- HUGE.

Check out Ptarmigan Ridge, too. I think it'd be even more classic, but haven't been able to do it yet.

Did it a number of years ago (10+) and the crux for us was getting onto the ridge, due to spicy, loose rock. I'd suggest earlier rather than the melted out, exposed loose rock later.

That's my experience too, that the road to White River trail head doesn't open until Memorial Day weekend making the approach several miles longer before that. But there were some parties who had made the long approach and climbed the route before that weekend. Like Brian said, mainly so there was less exposed rock and rock fall.

Weather was a problem for us. We had a cool calm weather window on the approach. At Thumb Rock wind driven snow all night buried us and we felt the safest route was back down. On our retreat the sun came out and it got so warm down on the Carbon that we triggered a loose wet slide. We slogged through ankle deep slush all the way across the Winthrop Glacier and up St. Elmo Pass (found out my expensive boots weren't as water proof as I thought). I learned a lot on that trip about what NOT to bring (don't over gear) and to go light and fast.