Unnamed Peak

July 24, 2018

Guide: Todd
Participants: Mike, Katharina
Time: 10 hours

Last night a technical rock climb was offered in addition to the same two routes as yesterday. Kat and I immediately jumped on it, while all the others went for the snow routes, so we essentially had a private guide for the day. We left camp at 07:30 and made our way up the bouldery moraine to Gobi Pass. From here it was basically a hike up to the false summit, following goat trails through tuckamore like bushes. An occasional scramble made this part of the day feel quite a bit like the Adirondacks. We topped out on this after about two hours on the go and took a rest break while eyeing our objective, a lovely fat granite blob with lots of ledges and dihedrals. Todd short roped us down to the col, and then an exposed ledge traverse with no protection brought us to our first belay stance. Todd led on, past a few annoying grassy pitches and then some cleaner rock pitches that provided enjoyable climbing. Kat and I followed, climbing together with a few meters of rope between us. At the crux pitch, I watched Todd struggle as his feet kept slipping out (we were all climbing in boots to this point), and I warned Kat to give a good belay as I thought he was about to fall. He pulled through the moves though, and as he set the next anchor we received a shout downwards that maybe switching to our rock shoes might be a prudent idea. We carefully changed footwear on our small perch in the sky, and then climbed this pitch which was quite nice using proper shoes. We all agreed that this one was about a 5.7. A few more scrambly pitches and we arrived on the summit just in time for lunch. We spent some time looking around for a pendant that was lost here by someone from the camp last week, but were unsuccessful in finding it. The descent involved three rappels from existing anchor stations set from an ascent from the camp on a previous week. The first one we had to re-equip as the anchor rope was chewed most of the way through by rodents. The second station was well chewed as well, but fortunately only on the standing end, so was still safe to use. The third station took some fruitless searching, and finally Todd made a radio call to camp for some beta. Getting to it involved an exposed down climbing which we belayed, and then we found this anchor also chewed up to shreds. I managed to re-rig it with the same cord by avoiding the damaged section and it was good to go before belaying Todd down to our position. The final rappel brought us down to the col. As soon as we pulled the rope, we watched a ground squirell scamper up the cliff towards the anchor cord... looking for a good meal of tasty red static nylon. A short third class scramble brought us up to the false summit after which it was all hiking. The hike down was complicated by the fact that we did not manage to find the goat track that we had followed on the way up, so it ended up being a bit of a bushwhack, but mercifully the tuckamore ended when we reached the pass. A long slog down some greenery on the scrappy moraine followed and we finally arrived back in camp at the same time the group from Ledge were wandering in.

Gobi Pass.

Our objective.

Todd starting the climb.

Fun lichen climbing.

Kat on summit of Un-nam-ed. Thumb spire behind us, just asking to be climbed.

View from the top over at Thomas.

Looking way down at camp.

Todd trying to find the third rappel station.

Final rappel.

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