Blue Diamond Ridge

Less than a week ago I got home from Red Rocks. I always make a trip there at this time of year for the Red Rock Rendezvous, and I try to incorporate some other guiding work and some personal climbing too.

This year Jess and I went down for a few days of climbing to kick off my trip. Amongst other routes, we climbed Burlesque in Icebox Canyon. I have rapped down this four pitch route on every time I've guided Frigid Air Buttress, as it's part of the standard descent. The massive flake on pitch three has been something I've wanted to climb ever since I first rapped past it.

It was a rather windy Saturday when we left the truck, but the winds abated as we got into the amphitheater below the route, and we didn't have to worry about the crowds on an old fashioned route known for it's wide climbing. The route itself was a fun adventure. Pitch two featured some fun crack climbing on great varnish, and the flake didn't disappoint. It starts as an offwidth and widens to a comfy squeeze chimney. The belay has great views down into the chimney. All in all a good route for any crack climbing aficionado or connoisseur of Red Rocks trad.

Then Jess took off and I had a fun week of guiding that included The Rendezvous. It was while driving to the event one morning a number of years ago that I first noticed the Blue Diamond Ridge. Morning light accentuates this line on Mount Wilson; as the sun makes its way across the sky it blends in with the Basin Wall behind. There's not a ton of beta out there on this route but everyone I spoke to talked about the Equalizer pitch, a notorious 5.9 lead where the only pro is two cams that are equalized part way up.

This event always brings a lot of my colleagues to the area, and every year that route comes up in conversation. It always goes something like, "Hey I'm looking for a partner for Blue Diamond Ridge...but you've got to lead the Equalizer pitch". I may have even been guilty of uttering those words myself. Over the years I've learned that some legendary pitches aren't all they're cracked up to be and I started wondering if the Equalizer was really that bad. This year I talked to my colleague Chad about the route and when I asked him if he was interested, I made sure to mention that I would be happy to lead the Equalizer. He was interested, and also was interested in leading the famous pitch. We decided that we would take the route as it came and whoever happened to be in front would take that lead.

Almost done with the approach.

A couple of days after the event we found ourselves walking away from my truck by headlamp. Pretty soon we were on an old dirt road that cuts across the desert directly toward the gully that leads to the base of the route. The dirt road peters out before it reaches Mount Wilson and after some cross country travel we picked up cairns that led us into the gully. Some fifth class climbing had us tightening our approach shoe laces and chalking up. The gully passes by a nice looking crag with varnished cracks that forms the proper toe of the ridge. This remote zone probably deserves a visit of it's own, if the climbing is half as good as it looks. After some ogling we followed the gully into the bowl between the ridge and The Basin Wall and then angled over onto the ridge where we took a long snack break at a big cairn.

I found some beta written by the first ascensionist at rockclimbing.com. He mentioned a "40' splitter crack" marking the start of the route. Above us was 4th and low 5th class climbing with no splitter in sight. We put on rock shoes and got out the rack, but left the rope coiled and resumed scrambling. We spent the next couple hundred feet climbing easy terrain on the left side of the ridge, but looking for straightforward spots that would put us back on the crest. Before long we found ourselves at the base of an excellent handcrack in a corner just left of the ridge crest. Whether on route or not, there was no way we weren't going to climb this thing! So we roped up and sent it.

Chad on a fun tight-hands crack part way up the ridge.

From here the route unfolded fairly smoothly. Some of it was easy ropeless scrambling. We did some simul-climbing. We made a number of shorter pitches with the follower wearing half the rope as tied-off coils. There were some terrain belays. We also made a handful of longer pitches with anchors and everything. Maybe halfway up passed through a cool tunnel to the left side of the ridge and got a good view of the upper part of the ridge. We saw something that looked like maybe it could be the mythical Equalizer. Chad led a short pitch of offwidth in good varnish to return us to the crest and then I took over. A few easy leads found us bypassing the only real tower on the route and then stowing the rope for some fun low 5th class climbing.

Getting fired up just before the tower.

Above this I found myself standing at the base of what we were pretty sure was the Equalizer pitch with the rack clipped to my harness. Chad put me on belay and I cast off. The reputation of this pitch was in my head at first, but after a few moves I just focused on the climbing....which was very good. It was frictiony face climbing on the best white rock I've ever climbed on in Red Rock. Aside from the two equalized #1 Camalots, I also placed a small C3 and a tricam. If we had carried more small C3's and small tricams I may have been able to get more gear. The movement was enjoyable and never desperate. Chad's offwidth felt a bit harder. Partway up Chad expressed some envy that I ended up with the pitch and I promised him that he could lead the money pitch(es) next time we climbed together.

Chad nearing the end of the Equalizer.

The Equalizer ends on a big flat step where we again coiled the rope for the last few hundred feet of scrambling. And then we were on top, putting the gear away, reapplying sunscreen, and happily changing out of our sweaty rock shoes. Good descent beta from rockclimbing.com had us back in First Creek Canyon faster than the standard walk back to the limestone, so we decided that a quick lap on Black Magic was in order on the way out.

Blue Diamond Ridge is a great route, but it's not typical Red Rocks fare. It feels a lot more like an alpine rock climb than say, Resolution Arete (also on Mount Wilson). The route felt fairly casual to Chad and I because we're both very comfortable climbing on 5.9 terrain and both have a lot of alpine climbing experience. We have a lot of experience routefinding on 3rd to low 5th class terrain and managing loose rock, which abounds on the route, particularly in the easier sections. Parties with appropriate skill and experience will find this is a really fun and rewarding route and shouldn't be intimidated by its reputation.

Tom Harrison Maps in The Atlantic

Almost every backcountry trip I've ever been on started with a map. When I was first figuring out how to travel in the backcountry in New Hampshire's White Mountains, those maps came from the Appalachian Mountain Club. These days if I'm looking at a map there's a 50% chance it's on a screen: Hillmap or Google Maps on my laptop, or a GPS app displaying a USGS quadrangle on my phone.

If I'm looking at a paper map of the Sierra it's pretty much guaranteed to be a Tom Harrison map. I think the first map of his I used was for Joshua Tree National Park. They're available everywhere in the Eastern Sierra (including some gas stations) and they're much more usable than USGS quads or National Geographic maps. The Atlantic has a short interview with him on their website right now.

Lee Vining Ice Climbing Route Resource

Everybody knows that Lee Vining Canyon is the number one spot in the state of California for ice climbing. It's also a growing center for mixed cragging. Over the past few years more drytooling routes, from low angled scrappy alpine simulators to steep magazine-cover-style climbing have been established in The Narrows area on the way to the ice. Two more have already gone up this season, with bolted anchors and high quality rock.

While Mountain Project is the most up-to-date resource for the mixed climbing in Lee Vining, online route beta for the ice is more limited. I (and others) have been slowly improving the Lee Vining ice information on Mountain Project, by submitting routes and areas that are as useful as I can make them, and also by using the "Improve This Page" feature. As far as what routes are where, and how hard a given line is, the best resource might be this old page. Click on the wall you're interested in and scroll over the route names to see the line overlay on the photo. Pretty cool!

If I could figure out some way to stick that in this post I would, but it's more than just a jpeg, so it's not in my skill set right now.

Alpine Pack Review

My first review for OutdoorGearLab just went live. It's a review of alpine climbing packs and you can read it by clicking on this link.

When my editor, McKenzie, asked me to do the review I was psyched. No matter what sort of climbing is your favorite, if you're a climber you nerd out on gear a bit. Even folks who only boulder (arguably the least gear intensive type of climbing) still obsess over the right shoes and the right shoe rubber. As a climber who is pretty keen on alpine climbing and also climbs the occasional big wall, the obsession runs deep. I read on line reviews pretty much every time I purchase something. Most reviews of climbing gear seem to be (a) a regurgitation of the manufacturers marketing materials, and (b) written after only a few days of use. They're also often published in magazines in which the manufacturer advertises. I know a few folks who write/have written for various climbing periodicals and they always seemed like people of integrity to me, but that definitely fits the definition of "conflict of interest".

Glen testing (and posing) with a CiloGear WorkSack.

OutdoorGearLab does things a little differently. First of all, they pay full price for everything. No companies send them free gear and the stuff they test is the same as the stuff climbers buy off the shelf, no prototypes. After the tests they sell the gear at deep discounts at their eBay store. Second, they rarely review just a single item, instead comparing items across a category. Third, their reviews are comprehensive. Each test has three articles in addition to each individual product review. I tested 9 packs. The shortest thing I wrote, one of the product reviews, is over 600 words. The longest, what they call the "Best In Class", which is the main overview article, is over 4000 words. In total I wrote over 14,000 words, which probably doubles the number of words I've written in the last 15 years! Fourth, the testing itself is comprehensive. Each of the 9 packs had at least 20 days in the field. I also did a bunch of weighing, measuring, and photographing at home. During the height of the writing process this definitely felt like a part time job, and I was glad I was doing the writing during the quiet part of my guiding year.

Thanks to everybody who took a photo, posed for a photo, or used a pack and gave me their two cents about it. Many thanks also to me excellent editor, McKenzie Long. If you've got some time to kill at work today, or if you're in the market for a new pack, check it out.

The Minaret Traverse

Scott Sinner and I did The Minaret Traverse a couple of weeks ago. We climbed all of the named Minarets in a day, which added up to 20 peaks. I don't think anyone had done exactly this before and though it's a rather arbitrary guideline, all of the rules in climbing are arbitrary. Why climb the Dawn Wall when you can walk up the back side of El Capitan on a trail? It was really fun, particularly the northern half. The rock quality was good when it needed to be and occasionally great.

Scott somewhere in The Minarets.

I'm not 100% sure why I like this kind of thing, but I know that I really really like it. When I started climbing I remember stumbling across an article by Matt Samet in Climbing Magazine about alpine traverses. In the article he climbs The Cirque Traverse (in The Wind River Range), The Grand Traverse (in the Tetons), and The Evolution Traverse (for what might have been it's first onsight) in a long road trip. He may have done another, I can't remember and lost the magazine a long time ago. 

Something in that article was the spark, though it was a while before I had the chops to really turn it into a fire. Obvious natural lines have always drawn my interest (Indian Creek is one of my favorite crags) and I like alpine climbing. Long ridges are the most obvious and aesthetic lines in the mountains and if that ridge takes me across multiple peaks, so much the better. As Josh Wharton said, "What could be better than climbing? More climbing."

After climbing all over the country I was drawn to The Sierra in no small part because of it's ridges. I believe it was Viren Perumal who suggested using Peter Croft's The Good, The Great, And The Awesome as a tick list. What do you know, there are a lot if ridge climbs in there, including four big traverses. One of them draws the eye insatiably every time I'm driving home on the 395. I usually find myself going well under the speed limit on the straightaway past the Mammoth Airport. 

For these reasons and more a few Sundays ago I woke up at three in the morning at a small bivy just east of The Gap, a pass just before the northernmost Minaret. It had been smoky lately (from The Rough Fire) and there was a slight chance of thunderstorms in the forecast. I popped in one earbud from my iPod, so I could get psyched but still converse with Scott, and fired up the stove. I was feeling some nervous anticipation. I wasn't scared about the climbing, but I was excited to finally get my hands on this ridge and I really wanted to send. We got our gear sorted out, Scott turned on his wicked bright alpine-start-routefinding headlamp (essentially the sun in a bottle strapped to his head), and off we went. 

There's not a lot of beta about this traverse. The guidebook write ups vary from inspiring to cryptic but none are particularly useful. I found trip reports online (here, here, here, and here) (oh yeah, and here) but none of those climbers did what I wanted to do: climb all of the peaks named "Minaret" in a day. Somewhere on the third page of search results I came across a Supertopo forum post from a few years ago. Scott Sinner was looking for a partner for this traverse. Most of the folks posting to the thread did not want to climb with Scott and seemed only interested in nay-saying. I barely knew Scott, but he was the only other person I had met who had expressed any interest. I sent him a message to find out if he still was and he replied quickly and in the affirmative. 

We met for beers to talk strategy and logistics. I wanted to get the earliest start we could without compromising a good night's sleep. My frequent partner Aaron Richards pointed out that if you're going to climb in the dark no matter what you might as well do it first, when you're fresh. Scott had the brilliant idea of going north to south, so as to front-load the more technical climbing. I had learned from experience that it's best to, whenever possible, shift walking to the end of the day. So we camped at The Gap and started real early.

In the interest of encouraging more people to climb this thing I included more notes about our particular route than I usually do. Please understand that in endeavors like this a sense of urgency is necessary and quality note taking often fell by the wayside. For clarity I capitalize an aspect (Southeast for example) when it's in the official name of an established route that I'm sure we climbed. This happened rarely. 

From The Gap we slogged uphill and north over talus and scree on the west side of Waller Minaret until we could turn east and scramble up 4th class to the summit. We retraced our steps to The Gap and then headed up the West Ridge of Leonard, a fun 4th and low 5th class scramble on mostly good rock. Folks call this the West Ridge, but since it comes directly from The Gap "Northwest Ridge" might be more accurate. Climbing down to the notch between Leonard and Turner Minarets was not memorable, but the excellent 5.7 climbing out of that notch was. We went slightly downhill to the west and then followed a crack system on good rock for a while passing an old piton in the process. 

A cool polished ramp on the west side of Turner (or was it Jensen?) Minaret.

Somewhere above this we walked up a cool polished ramp on the east side of the peak then climbed a really fun low 5th class corner with a finger and hand crack in the back. However, one or both of these climbing items could have come on the way up Jensen Minaret, as I can't particularly recall how we got to it's summit from Turner Minaret. I definitely recall how we got off of Jensen though. This was the first time we got out the rope. We probably could have down-climbed all of this terrain, but I think rapping was ultimately faster. We made one rappel from near the summit to a ledgy area. From here we climbed down and skier's left, on unlikely looking terrain, closer to the ridge crest. Then we made two more rappels, interspersed with some scrambling. The last rap put us in the chute on the west side of North Notch. Scrambling up North Notch Minaret was fairly easy, but I think we might have rapped off the top because there was a really good station already there.

A fun corner of Jensen (or was it Turner?) Minaret.

Next came Dyer Minaret, which Scott and I both thought was some of the best climbing on the whole thing. From Highway 395 near the Mammoth Airport you can pick out the little finger of Dyer sitting above North Notch. The northwest ridge is steep and exposed 5.6 - 7 on really good rock. The small summit of Dyer featured a rap station with a fixed pin and stopper equalized with a horn. One 30m rappel (watch the ends of your rope!) down the northeast face got us down to easier terrain. There's a good bivy for two on this side of the peak, from above it looked like a little nest jutting out into space. We climbed over the west shoulder of Dyer and down to the notch between it and Dawson Minaret.

Scott on Dawson Minaret. Jensen Minaret looms behind.

On Dawson we followed low 5th class ramps up and around the west side of the peak to the notch between it and Bedayan Minaret. Then we turned north and climbed up making moves up to about 5.7. Once again we were happy to take advantage of a not-bad in situ rap station. We climbed Bedayan by it's northeast face, which was mostly 4th class. This was notable because it was the only time we climbed a peak in the northern half of the traverse on it's east (our left) side.

I don't remember much about how we got up Rice Minaret, but my notes say "west-northwest ridge". I do remember making a shortish rap from a bomber natural feature down a cool looking tight corner/chimney. Getting onto the summit ridge of Eichhorn Minaret was walking. It was literally class 2/3. At one point I wished aloud for trekking poles.

Scott pulling onto Eichorn's summit ridge. Clyde Minaret is on the right.

There are several big towers between Eichorn and Michael Minarets. We traveled around these towers on the west, passing the big plaque memorializing Pete Starr, and dropping into and then climbing out of the tight gullies that separate them to reach the Portal. We passed through the Portal and climbed the face above and left of it. The rock was impeccable and the climbing was never harder than 5.6, which was good because the face was quite steep. I don't think we took the path of least resistance but it was fun. As we topped out it started to drizzle briefly. Three rappels got us down.

Crossing back over Eichorn we dipped into a bowl on the southwest side of the summit ridge to avoid it's sharpest parts. A little bit of exposed 5th class downclimbing got us onto the northwest ridge of Clyde Minaret and from there to it's summit. From here we followed Croft's path in reverse. Down to Amphitheater Lake for a welcome drink of water, up to Amphitheater Col and over the first bump of Adams Minaret to it's true summit, which involved some 4th class scrambling. Somewhere in there we waited 30 minutes for a thunderstorm we couldn't see (because of the smoke) but that sounded really quite loud and close.

We found this cool little piece of obsidian on our way up to Amphitheater Col. It looked like some kind of arrowhead or man-made tool to us. Anybody out there have any ideas/expertise in this sort of stuff?

Back down to the lake and up the Southwest Face of Ken Minaret to it's summit, where we made a few 5th class moves near the top. We retraced our steps back down and hopped talus over to South Notch Minaret. This little tower had what might have been the hardest climbing of the whole route, we weren't surprised everyone skips it.  We climbed it by the northwest face, which had consistent class 5 climbing on good rock up to maybe 5.8 or so, and descended with two short raps.

Now a bunch of talus walking led to Starr Minaret. We cached the climbing gear somewhere on the way and climbed Starr as the light faded. Our route to the summit was not the easiest way up and the descent even less so, but eventually we found our way back to the gear and hiked up Kehrlein Minaret. I had been on Kehrlein before, on a previous attempt traveling the other direction with my friend Dale Apgar. It's east ridge is the most complicated terrain feature connecting two minarets that we would travel on. I felt confident that we wouldn't get lost and would take a generally efficient route. Little did I know that our time getting from Kehrlein to Pridham Minaret would be well over 4 times the average time it took us to get between all the other summits. Though morale was still high and we were both still functioning well mentally the 17 summits before this one were making themselves felt. We moved more slowly in the dark, and made five rappels as we ground our way east. I don't know if I speak for Scott on this but I hope to never climb Kehrlein Minaret again. 

From the top of Pridham we could see Reigelhuth looming in the dark when we turned our headlamps off. Robotically we hiked over to it and climbed steep low 5th class terrain on the south side of it's west end. We stumbled, down-climbed, and butt slid down some loose gully and picked up a path that took us to the trail by the outlet of Minaret Lake. 

Success! As is common for me on these things, I was just glad to be done and figured I'd probably feel good about it later. I was more excited about the supplies we had cached by the outlet on our way in. We snacked (Fritos!), changed headlamp batteries, and psyched ourselves up for the death march back to The Gap.

This area is worthy of more climber traffic. The northern Minarets in particular (from The Gap to Clyde Minaret) were fun and engaging and certainly not the nightmare of loose rock and routefinding that they're often made out to be. Most of the skepticism I've heard about the Minarets has been from folks who have done minimal actual climbing there. If The North Ridge Of Conness or The Incredible Hulk is your standard for alpine rock quality, be prepared to be disappointed in The Minarets and in every other mountain range in the lower 48. Come to the Minarets understanding that these are mountains and that mountains (especially those that aren't overrun by other climbers) often contain some loose rock and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the climbing. If you are interested in this traverse (or part of it) and want more beta feel free to get in touch.