In late July Grace and I went back for revenge. The East Ridge of Inspiration has been on my to do list for over ten years, and when we went up to Terror Basin in 2019 a combination of our poor fitness and the fearsome appearance of the route led us to content ourselves with naught but an ascent of West Mac. This time we were back with much more confidence and fitness. Stronger legs, less gear, and tougher skin. The fist crack on the East Ridge has a reputation, and I trained myself ruthlessly on the fist crack at our local gym until I could lead its brutal, sand-papery, overhanging worst with ease.
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| Southern Pickets panorama from August 2019. |
There's lots of information online that seems designed to scare people away, but I don't think I can say enough good things about this climb. The approach is beautiful, and not too brutal by Pickets standards. The climbing is all on solid rock, with good protection. The descent is long, but generally clean and free from objective hazards. Photos and Beta below.
Beta:
Timing: No records here, but it may be useful for folks to see how long it takes an average Jack n' Jill to do the work, with no shortcuts taken on belays or protection:
Goodall Creek Parking to Moraine Camp - 8.5 h
Moraine Camp to the moat - 3.25 h
Moat to the notch belay - 3.5 h
Notch Belay to the Summit - 4.5 h
Summit to the glacier - 6.5 h (delayed by darkness)
Approach: It's possible to descend the rubble slope from the 6200' notch by hugging the rock wall on skiers right, which has many nice hand holds and helps avoid kicking rocks down.
Inspirations East Ridge is very long, mainly due to the complex descent. You can cut at least 4 hours off your day by bivying in the slabs below the Terror Glacier rather than the usual moraine camp. I'd do so if I had it to do over.
Terror Glacier: No problems. You get a good look at it on the approach and from camp. We swung far left under the ice cliff, then made an ascending traverse back right to the base of the climb. There are a couple steep bits, to about 40 degrees. Bring crampons.
From the glacier to the East Ridge notch: The goal is to gain a big right-trending ramp and follow it from left to right for almost the whole way. You can do this in one simul-pitch, as it's all 3rd and 4th class sand and heather with a few low 5th class rock moves. As it's a ramp, the loose character of the climbing doesn't create any party-inflicted rockfall hazard.
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| Our route from the glacier to the notch |
How best to reach the ramp from the glacier is debatable. We climbed a short pitch to the right of the ramp start because of the easy moat crossing and the fact the rock looked cleaner. There was also a nice alcove just above the glacier in which to transition from the glacier system to the rock system.
However, then we had to climb a fairly delicate runout traverse up and back left (5.7 on good but compact and sandy rock) to gain the ramp. This would be fun climbing for someone more comfortable on slabs than me! As it was, this formed the psychological crux of the whole day!
Near the top the ramp turns into a sharply incised gully leading toward the last (furthest left) notch in the east ridge. Nelson is really specific that you should NOT climb to the notch itself, indicating that you climb a single pitch up and left that lands you at the base of the 5.8 pre-crux pitch. I don't think this is physically possible. Indeed his description of this section bears little resemblance to my experience.
Maybe 100' below the notch I found a break in the wall to the left of the gully, and climbed out of the gully to the rock above. I then traversed up and right, more or less parallel to the gully in order to reach a right-facing open book that formed the upper left side of the notch. This was a full 180' pitch of really good, well protected 5.7, but the early traversing part looks improbable and hard to protect from below. I only attempted it because the open book feature looked so inviting. The top of the book lands you on a perfect belay ledge right on the ridge-crest. Note that this point is immediately above the notch, not well left of that as Nelson seems to indicate. My guess is that all the TRs out there talking about two pitches of loose scary 5.8 to gain the crest are from parties that strayed too far left to early.
East Ridge: Ascend the ridge!
P1: One long fun easy pitch up the crest gets you to the headwall. The rock suddenly transforms from good to perfect!
P2: Climb through the 5.8 blocks and lieback to easier ground that leads to a big comfy ledge at the start of the crux. Stout for the grade, but very solid rock with good gear.
P3: Gape in awe at the perfection of the rock. Climb straight up the fist/hand crack until midway, when the crack bifurcates briefly in a tear-drop shaped feature. Here, use a foot rail and a hidden side pull to traverse 6' right to the neighboring crack system. Climb this straight up, passing the overhanging spear of rock at the top on the left. Another comfy belay ledge awaits at the notch between this spear and the main headwall.
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| crux pitch! |
P4: Traverse right around the corner and up. Initially delicate 5.6 climbing leads to an obvious yellow brick road of 4th class rock to the false summit.
Looking toward the true summit of Inspiration from the top of P4 (false summit).
P5: Descend to the notch between true and false summits
P6: Ascend to the summit.
Pitch 4-6 could be simulclimbed, but we didn't know that a priori, and the distances work out so that you can run full pitches with little rope drag. It's a full 3 rope lengths from the top of the crux pitch to the summit.
Descent: The anchors are generally very high quality; no sketchy block rappels here. The West Ridge goes smoothly, but the South Face raps are a little hard to find and link together.
R1: Find the anchor just west of the summit. I believe we rapped less than 30 m to the next anchor, but I'm not entirely sure as we had the ropes tied for a 60mm rap. In any case, don't get greedy. This is the only time we had a hard time with the pull. Lots of friction, and the knot jammed on something 12" into the pull. I had to pull with all my weight to bring it down. I don't know why. Watch out for this one!
R2,3: Both more than 30 but less than 60 m. No problems. You should land at the start of the west ridge route, on the crest, atop the big 4th-class slab.
Finding the South Face raps: If you look down the ridge crest from here (after R3) you should be able to see another anchor about 30-40m down with no obvious way to reach it. This turns out not to be the anchor you want, but is the best landmark for finding the one you DO want. I down-climbed to this anchor, zig-zagging out onto the slabs to find the easiest way. There is a surprising amount of protection available. Having reached it, I found the slings were brittle, and it seemed little used. Looking down, I found another much more heavily used horn 5 m lower, and down-climbed further to that, which we ultimately used. It was a full rope length to the first anchor with the zig-zags, and we had to simulclimb to the 2nd.This anchor sits in a tight little notch right on the crest above the south face, and there was a sloping ledge running back from it, north toward the top of the gully.
I *think* you could reach this anchor most easily from the bottom of R3 by proceeding down the slabs toward the top of the gully for 60 m or so (skiers right), and then looking for a route back to the edge of the south face. The horn and slings in the little notch should be visible for some distance in that direction.
If a rap anchor could be constructed/found at the bottom of R3, this would make the whole descent way more efficient.
South Face raps:
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| our descent route |
R4: However you reach it, a full 60 m rap lands you on sandy 4th class terrain, with a perfect clear rope pull, but no anchor within reach. There's another visible 5 m below. There was at least one higher anchor I could have stopped at that may have saved time, but I didn't like the rope pull-angle from there.
I built an anchor at the bottom of R4, and Grace belayed me down to the next rap anchor. This block vibrated like a rotten bell when kicked, so I passed it by and continued climbing down for about 20 m toward a big sandy ledge. About 5 m above the ledge I found another good anchor on skiers right.
R5: Descend toward the big sandy ledge. This feature forms the top of a small buttress that protrudes out into the glacier. The ice rises at least 60 m higher to skiers left, so that's the way to go. Do not descend the gully directly below this anchor. Instead, traverse the ledge to skiers left and proceed down just to skiers left of its crest. A final massive anchor block is found on the next step in the buttress. Probably somewhat more than 30 m down. This was a surprisingly clean rope-pull.
R6: A clean 50 m rap off the edge to skiers left lands you on a big sandy ramp, with a convenient ice tongue providing access to the glacier.
Glacier Access Problem:
The ice tongue, while easy to access, is 45-50 degrees in angle, composed of hard firn, with a pair of huge crevasses gaping below. We were very happy to have a pair of pickets to protect this section, a hammer to drive them in, and steel crampons. About 10-15 meters of traversing deals with the steepest bit, and the angle quickly eases as you traverse down to climbers right.
Gear notes:
- We had a full rack with doubles from #.75 to #3. You do NOT need the 2nd #3. The pure fist crack section on the crux pitch is relatively short. I bumped up my first #3 placement maybe twice before leaving it behind. I kept saving my other one thinking I'd surely need it higher up, but wound up completing the pitch with it still on my harness!
- Two pickets and a hammer (BD venom) to drive them were really nice to have in getting back onto the glacier, as described above.
- It's almost certainly possible to complete the whole descent with 1 rope. There were solid looking intermediate anchor options at every point, though I didn't evaluate them all.
- In my paranoia around this descent I brought a few knifeblades. They were comforting to have in my back pocket, but weren't used.
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