Type: Trad, Snow, Alpine
FA: unknown
Page Views: 515 total · 17/month
Shared By: Arnav V on Aug 15, 2022
Admins: Micah Klesick, Nate Ball

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Description Suggest change

Depending on your route-finding and chosen route up the pinnacle, ranges from 4th-class to 5.3/5.4. All of it is on dangerously loose rock. Below description describes our route and other people's routes to hopefully encompass it all. 

Approach to the Red Saddle is roughly 6 miles with 7,400 feet of gain. 1,500 feet of that gain is on a trail. The remaining is bushwhacking, scree, or scrambling.

This is the fastest summer route to the top of Mt. Jefferson. Starting at the Pamelia Lake Trailhead, take the Pamelia Lake Trail to the PCT. From the PCT, you continue South for about 20 minutes. After 20 minutes of the PCT, the remaining ascent route is off-trail. This is at the 1,500 feet of vertical gain point.

The remaining route deviates from the PCT by going ENE into the trees. 500 vertical feet of 45-degree bush-whacking through brush is the crux of the day. Then, another 500-1,000 or so vertical feet of easy, less steep bushwhacking brings you to treeline via a faint, eastward, ridge-line. After breaking treeline, 1,000 vertical feet SSE up a kitty-litter-scree face brings you to the Southwest Ridge.

Once on the Southwest Ridge, following the ridge-line via the path of least resistance brings you to the Red Saddle. At around ~9600 feet, it merges into the South Ridge as well. The entire way is loose scree and rock, with long sections of class 2 - 3 scrambling. Right before the red saddle, there's a small gendarme in the way. This gendarme seems like it cliffs out, but go straight over and down it -- it's class 3.

Starting from the Red Saddle, the technical portion begins. The remaining route is exposed to dangerous rockfall as well. It wouldn't be a good idea to do this in the heat of the day. Even if you don't see recently fallen rocks embedded in the snow traverse, rest assured, it sees falling rock often. The slope is so steep that rocks don't stick and just rocket down that slope at absurd speeds into the ravine. 

From the Red Saddle, a 55-degree snow traverse usually at least 250 feet in length brings you back to rock. It's west facing, and we found it hard neve, even at noon. If you do the traverse higher, there's less snow but more loose rock. If you do the traverse lower, there's more snow but less loose rock. When we did it, we did the traverse high, partially in a protected moat, protecting it with rock pro. Later in the year, there might be no snow at all, and it would be a loose rock traverse. 

After the snow traverse, there are several ascent routes to the top of the North Summit (the highest). Apparently, if you hold a traverse after the snow and wrap around the North Ridge of the mountain, difficulties can be kept to 4th class. We went straight up the shoulder and then the SW face. We found sustained 5th-class terrain for about 150 - 200 feet, following a few rappel anchors. If I had to guess, I'd say around 5.4. Given there's many ways to do this, I've rated this easy 5th. This was on the SW face. Hard to protect because of the loose rock, but there are a couple rappel stations or solid horns to sling on the route we climbed. Be careful, pretty easy to kill your partner with the many teetering boulders on this route. 

During the entire technical portion, be very careful climbing below any other parties. Less than 1% of the rock is solid, and with the grade of the slope, any dislodged rocks will accelerate quickly and rocket across the climbing route and/or snow traverse. A lot of natural shedding occurs as well. 

The summit is marked by a short spire, with a rappel anchor a few feet away. We rappelled down our climbing route, going down the SW face of the summit pinnacle. From the summit, a ~25m rappel brought us to another anchor, generally going down the fall line. From the second rappel anchor, another ~25m fall-line rappel brought us to 4th-class terrain. This rappel route doesn't seem to be done often, as the second anchor was sun-damaged webbing with a single rap ring. I added more cordage to it. 

After the two rappels, about 200 feet of sketchy down-climbing on dinner plates returned us to the snow traverse. We couldn't find an opportunity to rappel down the 4th-class shoulder, even the giant blocks are too loose to trust as an anchor.

From the snow traverse, reverse your course to the Red Saddle. At the Red Saddle, you can reverse your way down the S Ridge (which the SW Ridge merged into around ~9,600 ft.). It's easy to miss the turn-off into the SW Ridge, but what I recommend is not to stick to the SW ridge for the descent. Instead, descend by scree-skiing down the face between the SW and S ridges. It's softer terrain and makes for faster descending. From that face, it's easy to traverse back to the SW ridge with minimal elevation gain around the ~8,000 foot level.  

After that, reverse your descent route back to the PCT. From the PCT, about 3 - 4 miles of on-trail travel brings you back to the Pamelia Lake Trailhead.

Some trip reports on this route can be found here. 

Our trip report, a direct fifth class way up:

Dr.Dirtbag's aka Sean O'Rourke's trip report, describing a 4th class way up.

Eric's Base Camp trip report, describing a spring ascent under snowy and rimey conditions.

Location Suggest change

Starts at the Pamelia Lake Trailhead. That trailhead apparently requires permits, even for day-use. Rangers don't patrol the off-trail terrain past Pamelia Lake (a popular camping and hangout spot), so make of that information what you will. Alternatively, the Woodpecker Trailhead has no permit requirements. 

Protection Suggest change

Can use snow pickets for the traverse. We were able to protect it with small cams, nuts, and slung rock horns in the moat. For the rock, slung horns and boulders (bring triple and/or quad-length slings) offer the most security. As for protection, small cams (up to 0.5 or 0.75) and nuts offer the most opportunities, but beware of the rock quality. We made do with a Blue and Black Totem, plus 5 BD small/medium nuts. If you go up the 4th-class way, you can likely forego rock pro if confident on that sort of terrain. 

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