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[Hide Comment] Very fun route. The second half is like Cathedral Peak. Duke and I soloed it ctc in about 10 hours with lots of time to relax and enjoy the scenery. We also summited North Peak on the way. Highly recommend this side trip.
Trekking poles are also recommended during an early season ascent. As of July 1st, there are many snowfields to cross on both the ascent and descent.
Jul 2, 2008
[Hide Comment] The upper third of this route is great, you can stay pretty much right on the ridge and enjoy the views. The rock quality is quite good and it is clean.
I down climbed this route after climbing the West Ridge which makes for a great day out and lots of time spent on rock along ridges. If you are going to do this I think downclimbing the North Ridge is the way to go as it means climbing up the harder sections since they are rappels.
7.5 hrs c2c, but I was wishing I had cash to take the ferry back across the lake by the end.
Feb 8, 2010
[Hide Comment] I highly recommend climbing something on North Peak first as that descent drops you right at the start of the North Ridge on Conness. I did the right-most ice couloir on North Peak, which meant having to carry my crampons, axes, and mtn boots in a pack while climbing the North Ridge. Not too bad. The downclimb after the second tower was the crux of the whole route; steep but with good secure jambs. 7.5 hours C2C for the linkup. 2 hours approach to the base of N Peak, 2 hour descent from Conness back to the car at Saddlebag Lake.
Jul 10, 2012
[Hide Comment] Did it yesterday ... Lots of fun interesting climbing and opportunities for exposure in the upper third, if you stay exactly on the crest as much as possible. I suspect in the upper section lots of people get over-eager to just "get to the top" and start just following the "line of least resistance".
Approach is mostly friendly and pretty (except the steep dirt near the top), but I missed the most efficient line, which holds close to the North side of valley which runs east down from the Conness - NorthPk col. My mistake was at the W end of Greenstone Lake the ground was wet, so I avoided it by going straight West, but I should have turned NW at that point. _________________________________________________________________
Navigation details at the second tower: Here's what I remember from yesterday ...
The first (higher) rappel anchor is pretty much at the summit of the second tower. The ridge runs roughly NW-SE at that point, and the normal second rappel anchor is about as far SE-ward from the first as it is down-ward. That is, the second is diagonally below the first.
So I assume that you can aim the first rappel (one guidebook says it's about 30 ft) slightly towards the second anchor, but then each climber still must do some horizontal traverse scrambling to get from the bottom of their rappel to the second anchor. (and it would be unwise to finish the first rappel too far below the second anchor -- so make sure you've spotted it before you go down very far -- better yet, before you start rappelling).
Second rappel (one guidebook says it's about 60 ft, which would require a rope about 120 ft / 37 meters) -- it makes sense to aim it slightly SE (toward the summit). Only go down until you feel comfortable traversing horizontally toward the summit. (Of course if the strongest climber down-climbs after belaying (or lowering) the others down, could bring a shorter rope).
Make only one rappel? Because of the diagonal configuration of the two anchors, I don't see how it could work to use a very long single rope starting from the top of the second tower, and arrive at the bottom in any position very helpful for continuing to climb up the North ridge. If you want to make only one rappel, then you've got to do some ...
Down-climbing: It's a good idea to first spot that second rappel anchor when Down-climbing -- say like 30 ft below and 30 ft SE from the summit of the second tower. Because if you make the obvious guess that the second anchor is somewhere directly below the first, you could waste lots of time looking for a workable down-climb route (as I discovered).
What worked for me was to stay overall fairly close to the crest of the ridge (which at that point is running SE down-ward), soon move to the NE side, then across to the SW side and on down to that second anchor. One guidebook says the difficulty is about 5.5, seems close enough. Some thoughtful + exposed moves the way I did it.
Next I started straight down from the second (lower) rappel anchor, then went SE (toward the summit) around a corner at an obvious place. Then I down-climbed a dihedral, holds felt pretty positive if used creatively with body position and footwork. Felt like not more than 5.6 - (though of course if you haven't practiced down-climbing 5.6 or harder on Top-Rope a few times, could be rather intimidating to try it first time at 11,000 ft). Then as soon as felt comfortable, I traversed horizontally out of the dihedral SE toward the summit. __________________________________________________
more climbing ... Two interesting and very exposed down-climbing sequences on the first tower: (1) Go all the way out to the end of the prong at the S end of the top of the first tower. Go down directly off the end of the prong. Finish a bit on the E side; then optionally (2) go down a ramp to the W side, then below the ramp diagonal down toward the E side. Finish by climbing up 10 ft to the crest of the ridge.
Aug 12, 2013
[Hide Comment] My wife and I did this last week, super fun route. Took us 11.5 hours car to car, with an hour lost at tower two.
Notes on rappel: we never found the second rappel anchor after an hour of searching. I don't get the 30' on the first rappel. Final for us was 70' first rappel to small sandy ledge, traverse straight across, this puts you at the crotch of the notch, throw a sling there, and rappel another 60'.
Jul 25, 2015
[Hide Comment] Just to be clear for folks who plan on leaving gear home for this climb, expect exposed 5.6 moves. The rappels are not mandatory, thus the rating should not be stated as "easy 5th"...this may be misleading.
Also, I doubt you will be disappointed regardless of what you expect, it's a great route.
Jul 25, 2015
[Hide Comment] Fun solo starting from Saddlebag lake and walking on the north side of all the little ponds all the way to the North ridge. I rappelled on the second tower as it seemed quite steep to me (two good anchors). The rest can be easily soloed. Nice scramble following the East ridge on the way back. Just head East all the way to the weather station and keep going on the ridge until you approach the next peak. From there, you can drop left into a scree slope (some trails) to reach the south side of Greenstone lake just west of Saddlebag lake. Done this way, it's a big nice loop!
Sep 3, 2015
[Hide Comment] I hiked in to Roosevelt Lake and approached from that side -- you can get up to the ridge with nothing harder than 4th class. I wasted a lot of time at the second tower, so I'll spray some more beta.
There were no less than 3 rappel anchors (left slings) -- one right at the top of the tower, another maybe 20 feet right below, and a third further out along the ridge. You probably only need the first and third. It seems like it would be difficult and a bit dangerous to stay on rappel from the first anchor to the last because it's quite far along the ridge -- you might risk a huge pendulum, and anyway the scrambling to get to last rappel anchor is mostly pretty easy. I think the easiest way to proceed is: 1) rappel from the high anchor down to a ledgy area below, then pull the rope. 2) scramble up a bit and along the ridge (i.e. towards the summit of Mt Conness) until the going looks pretty steep, then spot the last set of slings, 3) rappel again to another ledgy area. If you're standing atop the 2nd tower and facing the summit, all the rappels should be on right side of the ridgeline.
Aug 2, 2017
[Hide Comment] Super fun adventure! Great views! It took us 11 hours c2c from Saddleback lake campground. Approach was the hardest part. Water level was high(july 14th) in the first Conness lakes, and we made a mistake of going right+up the tallus at the first lake toward cool views of North Peak, but wasted 45 minutes or so and had to come back down.
Really cool, straight forward and quick scramble/easy-climb to the Second tower. The first rappel seemed longer than 30-feet and the second station was not obvious to me. We had a 60m thin rope and it did not seem like we had much left after reaching the second station.
We free soloed the whole thing. It was never super sketch, but second tower to the summit can be made adventurous if you stay closer to the edge. Be very careful and ready to downclimb easy-5th.
Light showers started as we rap'd down the second tower. But it was not bad. We reached the top around 1pm and storm clouds were approaching steadily by then. The views from the peak are spectacular all around.
The descent was quite long, and the dramatic thunder and one close lightning kept us on the edge. However, once we dropped down to the valley, all calm was restored. Descent would've been dicey if it rained consistently.
I finished my gallon of water halfway into the descent. I'd take a water filter next time. There were a few places on the approach and descent to fill up water. Hope this helps others planning this adventure in the coming days. It was awesome! Go prepared and enjoy the adventure.
Jul 16, 2018
[Hide Comment] Since I can't find the GPX for this approach, climb and descent, I made one! As in my friends I did the route and tracked it on our Garmin InReach devices. wikiloc.com/rock-climbing-t…
I would... perhaps not use our descent, it will get you out, but we definitely got lost somewhere in the middle for a while and lost about an hour. Just don't lost too much altitude after the obvious descent to the flats, and use the easiest way to get to the trails on the north side of streams. If you find that trail you will be out in another 1-1.5 hours.
Aug 27, 2018
[Hide Comment] Fine scrambling / simul climbing adventure. Due to the long hard winter, the Supertopo approach didn't work from the Conness Lakes (we didn't bring crampons for steep frozen snow slopes). Also, on the descent, the trail on the second steep step (~37.9661N/119.30080W) was covered with snow/nevee and we ended up in rather steep 4th class/easy 5th terrain on its right. Probably better to bypass this part by staying high and looping NE towards less steep terrain early in the season.Took us ~ 8 moving hours car to car.
Jul 28, 2019
[Hide Comment] Climbed this on 8/3/19. The Supertopo description of the approach is spot on. My partner and I had no trouble finding access to the Ridge in the dark. We had to deviate a little bit after arriving at the terminal moraine of the Conness Glacier. Here, Supertopo says the take the left-most class 4 gully; but this was completely covered in hard snow. Without an ice ax or crampons, ascending that gully was too dangerous. Instead, we ascended up a rock rib to the immediate right of the class 4 gully. This rock rib had one flared chimney section (low 5th) followed by a little bit of class 3/4 scrambling to gain the Ridge. The moves for this were no more harder than what you would encounter on the North Ridge.
For the descent, the snow can also be avoided completely. After trending around Alpine Lake on it's left, keep trending left, without gaining or losing elevation, further than you think you'll have to. You'll eventually encounter a class 2 descent down into the meadow. If you're doing any class 3+ downclimbing in this section, you're off-route on the descent. The mosquitoes on the descent were relentless and spoiled an otherwise beautiful outing. I've never seen that many mosquitoes in my life. Still an awesome climb though!
Having said all that, an ice ax and crampons are unnecessary for the approach or descent for this time of year. Save the weight, enjoy the hiking / climbing more!
Aug 5, 2019
[Hide Comment] First time up. Car to car 7 hrs 15 mins 10 miles 3k elevation gain. Windy day clear skies. We brought a rope for the rappels on tower two but we felt comfortable soloing down. I wouldn’t bring a rope. We also wore approach shoes. That being said we are confident scramblers so it depends on if you are comfortable with exposure. Here’s some details about our route.
We started crossing the dam bridge and stayed on the trail left of the lake. We saw the ferry go back and forth a few times so maybe it would be quicker to do that. It was about a mile to the end of the lake. A bit more trail comes to a boulder go left. Stay on the trail up by a stream leading to a waterfall. Stay right of the waterfall. Continue through open plains towards a slab. When the trail stops we made the mistake of climbing up the slab but quickly realized we needed to go back down to stay on the trail. Eventually we got to the gully area we would start hiking up to make our way to the ridge. We stopped here for a bite and made our way up one of the gully’s (don’t think we did the correct one because it was loose skree). We trended left after the gully to make our way to the ridge. We put on our wind breakers and harnesses since we thought we’d rappel eventually. As we finished the ridge and started scrambling we stayed right of the edge to find the true summit of tower one. We finally found the V slot we were looking for and went through it. We downclimbed to the left and made our way over to tower two. We found the slings on tower two and assessed the downclimb. It looked very doable so we went for it and trended climbers right to make our way to the second rappel. Here we could see the crux chimney but it still looked very doable. We downclimbed just past the crux and started traversing climbers right to begin the summit push. Here we stayed further right of the left edge to stay on easy ground. We saw many false summits as we went up so we trended climbers right to find the true summit. At last we submitted and entered our names in the journal. The descent was pretty obvious just go to the plateau and aim for the north east corner. There is a faint trail leading to it. Then make your way down talus for a long time. We seemed to get off track a little at this point as we no longer were following a trail but we could see a big trail in the grass below that we were heading to so we aimed for that. Once on the main flat hikers trail we went left and hiked for another mile or two until we saw on our phone we could cut through the woods straight up to the road. This shaved off about a mile of hiking on the road but it was steep and loose. I’d recommend it if you can see the road on the map. All in all the day would have been better without a rope and gear. We also ran out of water on the talus decent and we brought 3 liters. Hopefully this helps! Have fun and enjoy the views! Be sure to look over the edge time to time to see some exposure. Cheers!
Aug 20, 2021
[Hide Comment] What an awesome ridge scramble! I completed this route on 6/23/22. There is a little snow as you approach the ridge from the Conness lakes. I used microspikes, but you could probably get by without them. On the descent, there are still quite a few snow fields still remaining. My approach shoes and socks were soaked by the end. As such, I recommend snow gaiters or at least an extra pair of socks if you want to maximize comfort.
Jun 28, 2022
[Hide Comment] Great views and exposure! A good solo or training piece for the aspiring trad alpinist. All 5.easy climbing aside from the down climbs on the second tower if you choose not to rap. I didn't bring a rope but I brought my climbing shoes for the down climbs and was happy I did. As others stated before, if soloing, be comfortable down climbing exposed 5.6 or bring a rope to rap those sections.
I used all trails for the decent and whoever created that GPX track must have drawn it freehand on a map because it cliffed me out multiple times in the upper section. If doing it again, I would follow the defined trail on the map instead of the GPX track. Towards the bottom, I cut off the trail early to meet up with the road. It's mostly an up hill scree pile but I'd probably do it again to avoid backtracking. No snow crossings required on the approach or decent at this point in the season.
Jul 25, 2022
[Hide Comment] September 2023: Snow fields present, bring micro spikes or crampons solely for these parts, otherwise manageable without, no snow on ridge or summit climb.
Helpful tips I wish I had before attempting: 1. If not soloing, here is the gear needed: 40-50m rope. This is adequate for rappelling at the second tower as there are two rappel points. Pro: single rack #0.2 - #2, nuts, a pair of double length slings. There is PLENTY of options for placement and anchors. Other gear: face covering, the wind was RELENTLESS. Bring a water bladder and a filter. You’ll need it to stay hydrated to compensate for the water loss at altitude. Last source of water before the ridge is at the Conness lakes. Next source is the runoff into the alpine lake below east ridge. A satellite phone if you anticipate needing to contact anyone. There is very very minimal connection at the peak, if any. Crampons/Microspikes. A map of the area and trail back is essential. My partner and I did most of our descent in the dark; if we didn’t have a map and headlamps, we surely would have spent the night out there… you’ve been warned.
Other tidbits: it’s 12,500’ in the air, you’ll feel the altitude. Anticipate this. If you’re a comfortable leader, comfortable on exposed terrain, or otherwise confident in yourself: soloing the first two towers is a breeze and you will save lots of time refraining from rope-use. The fastest way back after taking the East ridge descent is to ascend near the dam run-off from saddlebag lake, otherwise you’re going to shoot out somewhere on the road. Save the hour, spend 20-30’ walking up the grade, off-trail.
Sep 10, 2023
I was mostly on route, but next time I'd stay on a little higher on the ridge. The raps are here:
37.96883, -119.32304 37.96899, -119.32315
Downclimbing these raps was straightforward and secure 5.5-5.6, but I'd recommend climbing shoes. The approach and deproach can be pretty muddy, snowy, or wet. I recommend a hiking pole and gaiters. I had ultralight crampons but didn't end up using them. Water is plentiful on the way up and down, so carry a filter and go light.
This route is so good it's hard to understand why it doesn't get done nearly as much as the Exum Ridge or stuff like that.
Jul 4, 2024
[Hide Comment] linked from the NW ridge of north peak, worth the hype (and worth the linkup). 3L of water was perfect, but i started around 4am so it didn't warm up until later. i thought the bottom of final headwall after the rappels was the crux, had to bust out a few insecure slabby moves about 100ft past the last rap, but i might've been off route. definitely take some time to route-find if soloing (or just don't be a gumby like me)
Aug 12, 2024
Avg: 3.6 from 260
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Albany, NY
Trekking poles are also recommended during an early season ascent. As of July 1st, there are many snowfields to cross on both the ascent and descent. Jul 2, 2008
Austin, TX
I down climbed this route after climbing the West Ridge which makes for a great day out and lots of time spent on rock along ridges. If you are going to do this I think downclimbing the North Ridge is the way to go as it means climbing up the harder sections since they are rappels.
7.5 hrs c2c, but I was wishing I had cash to take the ferry back across the lake by the end. Feb 8, 2010
Somewhere out West
Approach is mostly friendly and pretty (except the steep dirt near the top), but I missed the most efficient line, which holds close to the North side of valley which runs east down from the Conness - NorthPk col. My mistake was at the W end of Greenstone Lake the ground was wet, so I avoided it by going straight West, but I should have turned NW at that point.
_________________________________________________________________
Navigation details at the second tower:
Here's what I remember from yesterday ...
The first (higher) rappel anchor is pretty much at the summit of the second tower. The ridge runs roughly NW-SE at that point, and the normal second rappel anchor is about as far SE-ward from the first as it is down-ward. That is, the second is diagonally below the first.
So I assume that you can aim the first rappel (one guidebook says it's about 30 ft) slightly towards the second anchor, but then each climber still must do some horizontal traverse scrambling to get from the bottom of their rappel to the second anchor.
(and it would be unwise to finish the first rappel too far below the second anchor -- so make sure you've spotted it before you go down very far -- better yet, before you start rappelling).
Second rappel (one guidebook says it's about 60 ft, which would require a rope about 120 ft / 37 meters) -- it makes sense to aim it slightly SE (toward the summit). Only go down until you feel comfortable traversing horizontally toward the summit.
(Of course if the strongest climber down-climbs after belaying (or lowering) the others down, could bring a shorter rope).
Make only one rappel? Because of the diagonal configuration of the two anchors, I don't see how it could work to use a very long single rope starting from the top of the second tower, and arrive at the bottom in any position very helpful for continuing to climb up the North ridge. If you want to make only one rappel, then you've got to do some ...
Down-climbing:
It's a good idea to first spot that second rappel anchor when Down-climbing -- say like 30 ft below and 30 ft SE from the summit of the second tower. Because if you make the obvious guess that the second anchor is somewhere directly below the first, you could waste lots of time looking for a workable down-climb route (as I discovered).
What worked for me was to stay overall fairly close to the crest of the ridge (which at that point is running SE down-ward), soon move to the NE side, then across to the SW side and on down to that second anchor. One guidebook says the difficulty is about 5.5, seems close enough. Some thoughtful + exposed moves the way I did it.
Next I started straight down from the second (lower) rappel anchor, then went SE (toward the summit) around a corner at an obvious place. Then I down-climbed a dihedral, holds felt pretty positive if used creatively with body position and footwork. Felt like not more than 5.6 - (though of course if you haven't practiced down-climbing 5.6 or harder on Top-Rope a few times, could be rather intimidating to try it first time at 11,000 ft).
Then as soon as felt comfortable, I traversed horizontally out of the dihedral SE toward the summit.
__________________________________________________
more climbing ... Two interesting and very exposed down-climbing sequences on the first tower: (1) Go all the way out to the end of the prong at the S end of the top of the first tower. Go down directly off the end of the prong. Finish a bit on the E side; then optionally (2) go down a ramp to the W side, then below the ramp diagonal down toward the E side. Finish by climbing up 10 ft to the crest of the ridge. Aug 12, 2013
Los Alamos, NM
Tamarisk Clearing
Notes on rappel: we never found the second rappel anchor after an hour of searching. I don't get the 30' on the first rappel. Final for us was 70' first rappel to small sandy ledge, traverse straight across, this puts you at the crotch of the notch, throw a sling there, and rappel another 60'. Jul 25, 2015
Also, I doubt you will be disappointed regardless of what you expect, it's a great route. Jul 25, 2015
San Francisco
Tucson, AZ
There were no less than 3 rappel anchors (left slings) -- one right at the top of the tower, another maybe 20 feet right below, and a third further out along the ridge. You probably only need the first and third. It seems like it would be difficult and a bit dangerous to stay on rappel from the first anchor to the last because it's quite far along the ridge -- you might risk a huge pendulum, and anyway the scrambling to get to last rappel anchor is mostly pretty easy. I think the easiest way to proceed is: 1) rappel from the high anchor down to a ledgy area below, then pull the rope. 2) scramble up a bit and along the ridge (i.e. towards the summit of Mt Conness) until the going looks pretty steep, then spot the last set of slings, 3) rappel again to another ledgy area. If you're standing atop the 2nd tower and facing the summit, all the rappels should be on right side of the ridgeline. Aug 2, 2017
San Francisco
Really cool, straight forward and quick scramble/easy-climb to the Second tower. The first rappel seemed longer than 30-feet and the second station was not obvious to me. We had a 60m thin rope and it did not seem like we had much left after reaching the second station.
We free soloed the whole thing. It was never super sketch, but second tower to the summit can be made adventurous if you stay closer to the edge. Be very careful and ready to downclimb easy-5th.
Light showers started as we rap'd down the second tower. But it was not bad. We reached the top around 1pm and storm clouds were approaching steadily by then. The views from the peak are spectacular all around.
The descent was quite long, and the dramatic thunder and one close lightning kept us on the edge. However, once we dropped down to the valley, all calm was restored. Descent would've been dicey if it rained consistently.
I finished my gallon of water halfway into the descent. I'd take a water filter next time. There were a few places on the approach and descent to fill up water. Hope this helps others planning this adventure in the coming days. It was awesome! Go prepared and enjoy the adventure. Jul 16, 2018
Inglewood, ca
wikiloc.com/rock-climbing-t…
I would... perhaps not use our descent, it will get you out, but we definitely got lost somewhere in the middle for a while and lost about an hour. Just don't lost too much altitude after the obvious descent to the flats, and use the easiest way to get to the trails on the north side of streams. If you find that trail you will be out in another 1-1.5 hours. Aug 27, 2018
Lafayette
Santa Cruz, CA
For the descent, the snow can also be avoided completely. After trending around Alpine Lake on it's left, keep trending left, without gaining or losing elevation, further than you think you'll have to. You'll eventually encounter a class 2 descent down into the meadow. If you're doing any class 3+ downclimbing in this section, you're off-route on the descent. The mosquitoes on the descent were relentless and spoiled an otherwise beautiful outing. I've never seen that many mosquitoes in my life. Still an awesome climb though!
Having said all that, an ice ax and crampons are unnecessary for the approach or descent for this time of year. Save the weight, enjoy the hiking / climbing more! Aug 5, 2019
Coarsegold, CA
We started crossing the dam bridge and stayed on the trail left of the lake. We saw the ferry go back and forth a few times so maybe it would be quicker to do that. It was about a mile to the end of the lake. A bit more trail comes to a boulder go left. Stay on the trail up by a stream leading to a waterfall. Stay right of the waterfall. Continue through open plains towards a slab. When the trail stops we made the mistake of climbing up the slab but quickly realized we needed to go back down to stay on the trail. Eventually we got to the gully area we would start hiking up to make our way to the ridge. We stopped here for a bite and made our way up one of the gully’s (don’t think we did the correct one because it was loose skree). We trended left after the gully to make our way to the ridge. We put on our wind breakers and harnesses since we thought we’d rappel eventually. As we finished the ridge and started scrambling we stayed right of the edge to find the true summit of tower one. We finally found the V slot we were looking for and went through it. We downclimbed to the left and made our way over to tower two. We found the slings on tower two and assessed the downclimb. It looked very doable so we went for it and trended climbers right to make our way to the second rappel. Here we could see the crux chimney but it still looked very doable. We downclimbed just past the crux and started traversing climbers right to begin the summit push. Here we stayed further right of the left edge to stay on easy ground. We saw many false summits as we went up so we trended climbers right to find the true summit. At last we submitted and entered our names in the journal. The descent was pretty obvious just go to the plateau and aim for the north east corner. There is a faint trail leading to it. Then make your way down talus for a long time. We seemed to get off track a little at this point as we no longer were following a trail but we could see a big trail in the grass below that we were heading to so we aimed for that. Once on the main flat hikers trail we went left and hiked for another mile or two until we saw on our phone we could cut through the woods straight up to the road. This shaved off about a mile of hiking on the road but it was steep and loose. I’d recommend it if you can see the road on the map. All in all the day would have been better without a rope and gear. We also ran out of water on the talus decent and we brought 3 liters. Hopefully this helps! Have fun and enjoy the views! Be sure to look over the edge time to time to see some exposure. Cheers! Aug 20, 2021
Salt Lake City, UT
I used all trails for the decent and whoever created that GPX track must have drawn it freehand on a map because it cliffed me out multiple times in the upper section. If doing it again, I would follow the defined trail on the map instead of the GPX track. Towards the bottom, I cut off the trail early to meet up with the road. It's mostly an up hill scree pile but I'd probably do it again to avoid backtracking. No snow crossings required on the approach or decent at this point in the season. Jul 25, 2022
Rohnert Park
Snow fields present, bring micro spikes or crampons solely for these parts, otherwise manageable without, no snow on ridge or summit climb.
Helpful tips I wish I had before attempting:
1. If not soloing, here is the gear needed: 40-50m rope. This is adequate for rappelling at the second tower as there are two rappel points. Pro: single rack #0.2 - #2, nuts, a pair of double length slings. There is PLENTY of options for placement and anchors.
Other gear: face covering, the wind was RELENTLESS. Bring a water bladder and a filter. You’ll need it to stay hydrated to compensate for the water loss at altitude. Last source of water before the ridge is at the Conness lakes. Next source is the runoff into the alpine lake below east ridge. A satellite phone if you anticipate needing to contact anyone. There is very very minimal connection at the peak, if any. Crampons/Microspikes. A map of the area and trail back is essential. My partner and I did most of our descent in the dark; if we didn’t have a map and headlamps, we surely would have spent the night out there… you’ve been warned.
Other tidbits: it’s 12,500’ in the air, you’ll feel the altitude. Anticipate this. If you’re a comfortable leader, comfortable on exposed terrain, or otherwise confident in yourself: soloing the first two towers is a breeze and you will save lots of time refraining from rope-use.
The fastest way back after taking the East ridge descent is to ascend near the dam run-off from saddlebag lake, otherwise you’re going to shoot out somewhere on the road. Save the hour, spend 20-30’ walking up the grade, off-trail. Sep 10, 2023
Seattle, WA
Cambridge, MA
gaiagps.com/map/?loc=3.7/-1…
I was mostly on route, but next time I'd stay on a little higher on the ridge. The raps are here:
37.96883, -119.32304
37.96899, -119.32315
Downclimbing these raps was straightforward and secure 5.5-5.6, but I'd recommend climbing shoes. The approach and deproach can be pretty muddy, snowy, or wet. I recommend a hiking pole and gaiters. I had ultralight crampons but didn't end up using them. Water is plentiful on the way up and down, so carry a filter and go light.
This route is so good it's hard to understand why it doesn't get done nearly as much as the Exum Ridge or stuff like that. Jul 4, 2024
Las Vegas, NV