Central Rib

Overview

A wonderful alpine ridge route in a remote setting on the edge of the Beartooth mountains. Since Mt. Wood sits at the northern end of the range, you get continual views all the way down to the plains along the Yellowstone River, really giving you a sense of being "up there". The approach is long and arduous (see the "North Face" parent page for specific directions). Be prepared to do more hiking than climbing, to get a little lost, and to find mostly-good but sometimes-terrible rock - standard MT alpine stuff.

Beware of normal alpine concerns, primarily the potential for loose rock and bad weather. You're seldom in a position to toss stuff down onto your belayer, but check your holds a little before committing. Afternoon thunderstorms are common in the Beartooths and come up quickly; you'll be exposed for the entire outing, so get an early start on the climb and have a good weather window. Bear precautions are an ABSOLUTE MUST.

The climb itself is typical alpine ridge fare; a lot of 3rd and 4th class punctuated with some low-to-mid 5th. I would say the toughest bits are about 5.6, but not sustained; in the Brunckhorst guide he gives it 5.5, which is mostly fair, but on our climb the hardest parts were a little bit tougher than 5.5. Summit day will see you gaining about 2500 ft. total; about 1300 on the final approach to the base of the rib, and about 1200 of climbing and scrambling on the ridge proper. Bailing off to either side of the ridge would be complicated and only land you on a steep snowfield or glacier; you could probably downclimb/rappel the route without too much trouble (there's only a few technical bits), but you will definitely reach a point where going up is the best option to "retreat".

Overall, I'd say it climbs similarly to the NE arete of Mt. Cowen (an area classic), but a little longer and a little more complicated. We had to do a couple small rappels to get into notches, but that might have been due to poor routefinding. At one point a soloist came cruising past us (the only other climber we saw on Labor Day weekend), and he said he just "took the path of least resistance", so your mileage may vary.

From basecamp, it took us about 1.5 hours to get to the base of the climb, about 8.5 hours to do the climb, and about 4 hours to descend back to camp. Including breaks, it was about a 15-16 hour day camp to camp. But we are climbing turtles. For most parties, anywhere from 8 - 12 hours camp to camp is probably a good guess. I'd recommend a 3-day itinerary: hike out and camp below the face on day 1, get an early start to do the climb on day 2, and hike out on day 3; a 2-day itinerary could be feasible as well, given a good weather forecast.

Detailed Breakdown

Follow the directions in "Location" to get to the base of the rib. From there, scramble a ways (200 ft?) up the dark rock (3rd class). You'll reach a bit of a top-out and be looking down a small drop (~15 ft) into a notch. We did a short rap to get into the notch, although from looking back up it is probably possible to downclimb. Choose based on your risk tolerance.

After this, you'll be greeted with the first real pitch of climbing. It goes about 5.5 - 5.6 and protects well in cracks on good rock. I did about 40 meters, set up a belay station, and brought up the second. Then I climbed about another 15 - 20 meters, which ended up being mostly 4th class - we didn't really need to pitch that part out but we weren't sure what was coming up so stayed on belay.

At that point we had topped out on another feature, this time with about a 20 - 30 ft drop into a notch. There might have been a way to work around the sides of the rib and avoid topping out here. But given our position, we slung a marginal horn and did a sketchy rappel down into the notch. Looking back up, the downclimb would have been pretty tenuous and scary, so we were glad we rapped.

After that, the ridge mellows for a while, and you can ramble up about 300 - 400 vertical feet of 3rd - 4th class terrain. Eventually you'll get to a big obvious platform on top of a band of dark rock, with an intimidating step of golden granite (or gneiss?) in front of you. The step looked solid, but also like the climbing would be a couple grades harder, so since I was tired I decided to sneak around the right hand side. This pitch was very loose but the climbing stayed at about 5.5 - 5.6, and I came out on top of the step and belayed up my partner.

From here there was a little more scrambling, and then another short rock step with what felt like the hardest move of the whole climb. It's really a matter of "just keep climbing" at this point, picking your up way through 4th and 5th class terrain. I think we pitched out maybe one more loose 5.5 - 5.6 section. But it was mostly simuling and occasionally uncoiling a little rope to give a belay over a particularly steep section.

Eventually we came up on a big ledge, I think about 100 or so feet below the west summit. We could tell there was no more technical climbing to the top, so dropped the rope and scrambled up to soak in the view.

Descent

From the west summit, go back down to the big ledge. From here, traverse over to the east summit; this really truly is 3rd class, and the routefinding is not hard. Once you tag the east summit, descend to the east and then N/NE, to reach the obvious Mt. Wood plateau. Once on the plateau, keep heading downhill on scree and talus towards the base of the N face. At this point, there should be a distinct slope of darker scree/talus; keep this on skier's left as you descend to avoid cliffing out.

Eventually you'll reach the bench where you started your climb. Transition onto the light-colored rock of the fresh moraine, and basically retrace your steps from the approach back down to camp at the base of the N face.

Finally, from camp at the base of the N face, take whatever method (Stillwater Plateau or West Fishtail Creek drainage) seems better to get back your car at the Benbow mine; probably retrace whatever way you took to get in.

Follow the directions in the North Face sub-area to get to the base of the north face. From here, notice the fresher, very light-colored moraine that heads up in the direction of the east summit. Hike up this moraine (it's not as steep as it looks), heading SE, to a bowl/bench under the big face of the east summit. You should be able to wrap around to the E side of the Central Rib from here. This gains about 1300 ft and covers about .5 miles from a camp at the base; it will be more if you're camping at the West Fisthtail Lakes.

As you wrap around to the E side of the rib, keep an eye out for a good spot to get on. You should see some dark/black rock at the toe of the rib - start scrambling up there.

A pretty standard set of alpine gear should be fine for this route. I think we had cams from .4 to 3, a couple smaller cams, a full set of nuts, some tri-cams (0.5, 1, 1.5, 2), and 8-10 alpine draws, which was plenty. Of course you'll need some extra slings/webbing/cord for anchors and natural pro; make sure you're also equipped to do a rappel or two in case you find yourself staring down a notch. A 50 meter rope worked just fine for the climb, and even a 40M would probably be OK.