Jim and I had been planning to climb Spider Mountain last weekend. But when the weather turned bad, we headed east. Sherpa Peak has been on my list every since I climbed Mount Stuart and here we had 3-days. Just what we wanted.
Jim had already climbed Sherpa but it was 38 years ago so he remembered very little. He also did the West Ridge. We were aiming for the East Ridge.
We planned a relaxed schedule, hiking in on Saturday. Planning to camp on the bivy, rock ledges under Sherpa. When we crested Longs Pass, both Sherpa and Mount Stuart were engulfed in high clouds. We were not eager to camp in the clouds so we found a flat spot under a rock, high on the ridge. It would work for 2 nights.
The next morning was beautiful. We quickly gained the remaining 500 feet to cross over the ridge to the basin below Sherpa. The balanced rock is unbelievable. Jim and I were thankful that the balanced rock is not the high point.
We probably should have been in more of a hurry to reach the East Ridge but we were enjoying the views and sunshine. This area is very beautiful. A great route up Mount Stuart which avoids the scree in Cascadian Couloir.
After taking a long break and climbing the gully complete with a couple of mots, we reached the East Ridge around 2pm which had great views of Argonaut and the other Enchantments peaks.
At the first chimney, we opted to rope up and climb the face. This is said to have a chockstone in the chimney but we did see it. Looked pretty difficult to climb up the chimney.
The rock was very solid. Quite fun.
When Jim and I reached the top of the wall, we were eager to do some more climbing. So eager, we got off route. At least we were not the only climbers to pick the wrong route, we found several rappel slings.
Eventually we found the correct route. We opted for the South Face route which is more convoluted but at least we could avoid the class 5 slabs with gravel on the North Face.
We soon found out why the south face route is called convoluted. It goes up the south face, then up and under the balanced rock which you could almost reach up and touch, then over to the summit block which is almost vertical from here. So we dropped to a ledge on the north side, crossed under the summit block, found a class 3 gully which gains the west ridge 50 feet from the summit. From there, it is a ridge run to the summit.
For a flat summit ridge, it was pretty unnerving. Two step across gaps and a whole bunch of exposer. Actually the entire route was exposed.
Not to mention that some time after we got on route, the clouds came in. Clouds normally are just a pain but these clouds were way worse. They were wet clouds coming out of the north. They were accompanied by a very cold wind. Every time the wind blew, it sucked all the heat out of your body.
When we first hit the summit block, the weather looked like this…
When we summited, the weather looked like this…
This was the shortest summit stay we have ever had. Took a picture and then started our retreat.
We did 4 rappels (2 were over hanging) and 1 running belay. Standing and waiting to rappel was brutally cold. We were both so glad to glad off the east ridge and return to the gully leading down. The dense cloud cover made everything go so slow. We had to navigate off memory.
Though I had marked where we left our poles on my GPS, it took us time to find them. We had about 20 feet of visibility. For the entire decent, Jim and I operated in super, safety mode. An injury now would really not be a good idea.
Soon we were hit by darkness and then snow. Would this night ever end? We were so excited to find our little rock, bivy site that we called camp. It snowed off and on all night though it was 45 degrees out. We stayed in our bags until almost 11am. I refused to get up before the sun was out.
The cold wind stayed with us until we hit the car. Actually it stayed with us until we got in the car.
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