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Southern Pickets as seen from above Sibley Pass w/ Luna Peak and Mount Redoubt at far right.
With a 6am departure, we made good time up to Sibley Pass, but, soon found ourselves at an impasse. In short, we were stymied by very hard glacier ice (not aluminum crampon friendly!) where the approach makes a short jog on the north-side of the ridge above North Fork Sibley Creek. Valuable time was lost searching for another way around and it was becoming increasingly apparent that we weren't going to be able to pull off Dorado Needle on this day. Surprisingly, there were patches of fresh snow down in the meadow at around 5500ft, and the west faces of Eldorado Peak, Dorado Needle and the more distant Forbidden, Boston and Sahale Peaks all had a significant dusting of new snow.
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Looking to the SSE at the Ptarmigan Traverse peaks.
We reluctantly called off the climb, but, now what? Time permitting, we had talked of tagging The Triad on our return from Dorado Needle (the approach passes directly beneath it) and now made it our primary objective. About a third of the distance out to Dorado Needle, we figured The Triad would be a quick-and-dirty consolation prize. Not so! Now that traversing below the north-side of the ridge was not an option, we were forced to descend into the basin on the sunny south-side. Would we be able to reach the talus and slab slopes below The Triad's South Face this way?
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Eric approaches the next obstacle.
After some steep, meadowy side-hilling and some talus we gained a grassy buttress and found ourselves at another impasse. Steep cliffs below blocked access into the next basin. Looking down the buttress a short distance, a bench seemed to break the buttress and connect with a grassy slope and brushy cliffs, seemingly providing a viable route down into the basin. The grassy slope, it turns out, was very steep and still slick with dew and patches of melting snow. It would have been a long ride down to the boulders in the basin below should one of us have lost our footing there! We looked to the brushy cliffs for options.
While Eric and I waited above, Paul eventually managed to descend steep trees and brush interspersed with minor cliff bands to finally reappear on talus slopes in the basin below. Not particularly motivated to second Paul's down-route, I chose to rappel wet heather directly along the cliff’s edge. 2X30m raps saw me into the basin, with 15 feet of mossy chimney to down-climb at the very bottom. We would later call this portion of the route the "jungle pitch". Not liking what he was seeing and presumably fed up with the many obstacles that day, Eric uncharacteristically decided enough was enough and returned to Sibley Pass to scramble up Hidden Lakes Peak instead. We would see him many hours later back at the car.
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More grassy side-hilling and some talus scrambling brought us to small snowfields below The Triad's S. Face. Note Paul's overlong ice axe protruding from his under-sized pack.
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Looking towards the Buckindy Range from below the East Ridge w/ Sloan peeking in background right.
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Mutchler Peak to Snowking Mountain from the northeast.
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The East Ridge w/ summit at upper left.
We dumped some gear, continued on to the saddle, and commenced the ridge climb. The climbing was easy (3rd and 4th-class), but exposed. The rock wasn’t the best, but made for enjoyable climbing nonetheless.
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Paul waits for me to join him below the false summit.
We belayed two 30m pitches and running-belayed the rest. I had a minor fit when I saw what I feared was a front moving in from the west and urged Paul to consider bailing. He consoled me with the promise that he'd fork over $100 if it started to rain.
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Paul leads a short, but steep and exposed pitch to gain the ridge crest.
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With the technical difficulties now behind us, only a short scramble to the summit remained.
Rain it didn't, and by 2pm, we were sitting on the summit, losing ourselves in the views of Marble Creek Valley with Dorado Needle and Eldorado Peak towering above the cirque. From nowhere else that I have been do the peaks of the Ptarmigan Traverse show themselves as prominently as they do from The Triad - from Cascade Pass all the way to Spire Point...it's all laid out for you to behold!
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Eldorado Glacier, Mount Logan, Forbidden Peak (w/ Mt. Torment in front), Mount Buckner, Boston Peak and Sahale Peak left-to-right...yes, I'm tired of annotating.
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Ptarmigan Traverse close-up w/ Middle Cascade Glacier, Spider Mountain, Bonanza Peak (in background), Mount Formidable, Le Conte Glacier, Old Guard Peak, Sentinel Leak (w/ Le Conte Mtn. in front and slightly right), Sinister Peak, Chikamin Glacier and Dome Peak left-to-right.
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Paul sits atop The Triad - an excellent view-summit!
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Eventually, it was time to head back. We scrambled down from the summit and belayed each other down one of the steeper and more exposed portions of the route. We then scrambled back to the next minor ridge tower, located the rap station and rapped back down (a 50m rope would suffice). A short snow traverse on the north-side of the ridge and a little more scrambling and we were back on easy terrain.
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From there, we retraced our steps back to the jungle pitch and running belayed back up it.
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Early Morning Spire, Dorado Needle and Eldorado Peak (left-to-right) in the afternoon light.
The remaining hike out was tiresome, but, the awesome scenery made up for what we lacked in endurance.
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A spectacular sunset!
We made it back to the car (and Eric) before full-dark. The "Double Whammy" at Good Food never tasted so good!
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