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East Ridge
5.8,
Trad, Alpine, 400 ft (121 m), 4 pitches, Grade II,
Avg: 2.5 from 4
votes
FA: unknown
Colorado
> Alpine Rock
> Gore Mtn Range
> Valhalla Peak, Freya…
Description
There is no previous information that I could find on the east ridge on the internet, but that's not at all to say the East Ridge had not been previously climbed. However, it felt like a first ascent to us, as we were climbing up and up hoping we wouldn't get turned around and have to rappel down.
On September 10, 2016, Ryan Marsters, Mike Santoro, & I climbed the east ridge of Freya Tower followed by a climb up Stan Wagon's 5.6 route on Thor Tower.
Scramble around to the base of the east ridge from Asgard Meadows. Scramble maybe 50' (4th/ low 5th class) to a decent ledge at the base of a large slab into a southeast-facing dihedral. Belay from here for pitch 1. Note we climbed this route in approach shoes.
Pitch 1: climb up the steep slab on the dihedral's right side making some tricky leftward traversing moves at the top to get into the base of the vertical crux section of the dihedral (5.8). Climb the well-defined crack for 10' to a nice 3' wide grassy belay ledge. Belay here for pitch 2.
Pitch 2: climb up the right-trending crack and around the corner (5.8), running it out on easier terrain to a belay ledge.
Pitch 3: chimney up between a large headwall to the west and a smaller slab tower to its east. Then, climb the east-facing headwall (a 5.8 move maybe on the flat face) to a belay ledge at the top. Scramble down 10' to the west from the small belay ledge to a small col and then on up to the base of pitch 4.
Pitch 4: climb the nice, slightly overhanging hand crack (5.8) for 40' to a belay ledge. Scramble to the small, exposed summit of Freya.
Descent: scramble exposed 4th/low 5th class down Freya's standard west ridge to the Freya-Thor saddle and then down to Asgard Meadows.
Protection
An alpine rack (BD C4 cams up to #2, a few Aliens, and a set of nuts).
[Hide Photo] The scramble up to the base of pitch 4.
[Hide Photo] Summit of Freya looking down its standard west ridge to Thor Tower.
[Hide Photo] Mike descending the west ridge from Freya's summit.
[Hide Photo] Mikey on an upclimb section of Freya's standard west ridge.
[Hide Photo] Ryan getting into the slightly overhung handcrack on lead up pitch 4.
[Hide Photo] Me on lead up pitch 1 into the large dihedral.
On pitch 1, we were left of Brandon's route for the first part. The traverse under the overhang was difficult. Pitch 2: identical with Brandon's.
Pitch 3: we went around to the right (after a 6-foot easy downclimb) and then back left to end at the same face. They went left of the very large red slab facing the belay.
Pitch 4: we went to the left of their route (beside a prominent horn). Our choice here was definitely 5.6 compared to their 5.8 rating on their route.
The rock was generally excellent, and the final Class 3/4 traverse along the top of the ridge was spectacular. We descended on a long rappel just before the Freya-Thor col -- down a gully that I climbed some years ago (5.6) when climbing this by the west side.
Stan Wagon
stanwagon.com Aug 5, 2017