Mt Fisher - SE Buttress
It began as a project when Phil and I spotted this awesome looking
ridge from HW 20 back in May on our way out to Liberty Bell. "I
think it's only like 5.4," he said. After some research in Beckey
and through BOELPS, that seemed to pretty much be the case. It was a
long rock ridge with a only a moderate technical grade. Supposidly it
is only a Alpine grade II, but seeing as the route, from toe of ridge
to summit, is longer than 1,500 feet of technical climbing, I figured
it would be more like a III or IV.
The boealps group that I contacted had done most of the route 10 years
ago and had a total epic. "36 hours day, cut ropes, broken arm."
That's basically what came of their climb of the SE buttress. "But
it might be a good route with more reconnisance," said Mike Bingle
who was one of the party of three back in 1990. Undaunted I recruited
Phil,, Doug Sanders, and Brian Tryba for a shot at the ridge. Little
did we know...
Brian below the SE Ridge of Fisher, rising out of the clouds
There is no trail into the basin under Fisher, so you must cross Granite
creek on a log and work your way up a river valley in the forrest. These
were pretty much open forrest, and so we all moved really quickly. After
finding a few game trails and some cool trails through the two slide
paths that beckey mentions, we broke out into the basin below the ridge.
We grabbed some lunch and marvelled at such an unknown landscape that
very rarely saw people. From the road the ridge looks hard, averaging
over 50 degrees in angle, from the basin, it doens't look so bad...
big, but do able. Then Doug enlightened us with his hard won experience,
saying that things look hard from far away, easy when your near, and
really hard when your right there! So up the hill we bushwacked, sometimes
two tooling it up the dirt in the forrest! Well Phil, the new age Ome,
thought that was a little excessive, but you never know when a good
tool stick can come in handy! :) From here we proceeded in out worst-possible-bush-route
out onto the snow left covering the creek leading to the basin under
the ridge. I say this because it is way easier to break out into the
open medows and rock scree/snow before heading up hill. We really had
to battle to get out of the Trees that Beckey recomends staying in.
Finally we reached the botton of the ridge, ready to plop down in those
awesome "heather ledges" that Mike had promised were right
there. There were no stinking ledges! it was all 20+ degree scree and
snow, not a real comfortable sleeping spot! So we climbed on the lower
toe of the ridge and checked out the various areas at the base until
we found paydirt! Under the descent gully, rather high (6700 ft I think)
there was a small rocky outcropping where we were able to level out
a whole lot of stones into room for 4 bivis! The site had probably been
used before, but had been overgrown with larger, pointier rocks. This
prooved to be a nice bivi with running water 300 feet uphill and maid
service. It took us four hours to make it to the base of the route,
not bad we thought, shaved an hour off of ol' Fred's time. (however,
from the description, or lack there of, Fred has surely not done this
route!) We figured that the "poorly defined dihedral" was
infact a gully like feature that ran on the left (S) side of the ridge,
and then joined up higer before a step section on the ridge. The sleep
that night was very welcome, but Doug summed up the comfort with one
sentance: "That night was all about one rock!" Sleeping on
scree can be an different experience for sure!
At 4:30 am we awoke to clear skies and cold conditions. Man, I wish
it would warm up, we're not climbing snow this weekend! We had descided
that we would each carry our packs over the mountain, which included
boots, ice axe and two quarts of water. This was because the gully that
we had to descend was steep snow, and the previous party 10 years ago
had totally run out of water on their epic. We wanted to avoid that.
So up we went, galavanting up the rock with Brain and Doug climbing
together and Phil and I climbing together, running belay style. After
a regular pitch of steep climbing the grade eased off and we ran many
ropelengths up into the large basin next to the ridge. From here we
climbed up some steep, loosening rock up to the ridge crest. The weather
seemed to be coming in and getting worse, but we descided to run up
another "pitch" anyways. not to get too committed, but a pitch
usually consisted of 4-5 ropelegths, or roughly 500 feet! So up we climbed
through the fog onto the crux of the route. The obvious steepening of
the ridge forms a path at about 5.7 where you climb up a chimney/flare,
traverse 10 right and repeat about 4 or 5 times. Bypassing the overhanging
rock by continuing right, you eventially hit the crest where there is
a good belay tree. Phil hadn't done much "hard core" running
belay (I would admit that the grade is a bit high for my comfort as
well), so I fixed belayed phil up through the hard section. I just handed
the guy the rack and he flow off of the belay, leading up the ridge.
From here the route matches Beckey's description: 3rd and 4th class
with the ocasional low to mid 5th steps. We continued this until we
caught up with doug and brian, at that point I took back the lead and
we continued to traverse the very narrow and extremely exposed ridge.
At some points were were walking on a 6 inch wide ledge of loose-ish
rock with major drops on both sides. cool! We started climbing up and
down these little pinnacles on the ridge, the downclimbing usually being
very loose. On one downclimb, my pack caught a textbook sized rock and
slammed it down onto my right hand's pinky. >ouch!!! fuck!< It
smashed it good, which I later found out was a small fracture that has
left me in a splint for 3 weeks. But no time to stop and splint in the
middle of a climb, so on we went, reaching the SE summit soon there
after. It had been 5 hours from the base of the ridge to this point.
The SE summit is one of those stupendously exposed pinnacles where the
only feasable way down to the notch is to down climb an airy ridge to
some old rap slings on the South side. From here we were able to make
a single rope rapp down a very loose overhanging chimney into a deep
notch. This is a way committing rapp because you don't really have any
way out of the notch except up the route. All other exits are steep
loose gullies that lead onto the S face.
Brian had followed the ridge downclimb, and the look on his face said
it all... fear! And now it was up to him to lead a short section of
5.8 out of the notch. I was pretty psyched up to do it until I watched
Brian lead it (solid 5.9 kind of guy) and take forever working out the
seemingly easy moves up the 25 foot wall. Well the pro was a little
sketch, and the moves were really off balance on loose rock. Still,
enjoyable climbing up a half rope lead us to easier ground. When bringing
phil up, the anchor consisted of a mini cam stuck in a small cracked
rock, and two feet. I yelled down, "come on up and be careful!"
I'll bet he wondered why I said that! hahahahaha. Doug and Brian zoooooomed
off and were soon gone into the mist. Phil and I followed and after
about another 500 feet of cool 4th class climbing on way solid white
granite we arrived on top at about 1 pm. Hurt and tired (pinky pain)
I tossed the rack down and pulled out the food. Phil was soon on top,
and we were all then admiring the inside of the cloud we were in. It
had taken us just under 7 hours to climb the whole ridge.
The descent, which I really didn't want to think about, screamed of
danger. There was no single rapp into a moderate snow gully as Beckey
had depicted. There were tons of steepening-lower-down very loose 4th
class gullys. The weather cleared a bit and we were able to tell that
we needed to head down the south facing gullys to the snow chute 500
feet below. Phil finally got me off my butt and we started to down climb
the loose rock. Major rock slides were common, and we were only getting
started. After a lot of downclimbing, we met up with doug and brian
about 100 feet about the snow. The gully looked really moated out. Glide
cracks ran the width of it, and the snow was very soft. Doug spotted
a sling down lower, so we descided to make a double rope rapp from there
into the gully. After changing into boots on an odd "pile of completely
loose rocks" we rapped into the gully, and thus safety. The rest
rapped down, and because it was alpine, I knew we would have to stick
our ropes. For sure, I had to climb back up and stand on a glide crack
bridge and pull the ropes down. Phil, having soft boots and probably
seeking a place to "get hankie with it" had started heading
down to camp. The three of us followed and after some excellent foot
glissades, we were back at the rock camp. Camp to camp we had been 11
hours, taking just about 3 hours to descend.
The bush wack out was descent and we found a good way into the forrest
from the bottom of the basin. The pinky was hurtin' and I couldn't help
but whack it on every tree and bush. ugh! How I wanted the steaming
hot food that was ready in Marblemount. Unfortunatly, it was not to
be, for by the time we got there, Buffalo Run and everything else was
closed! Sucks, so on to the Golden Arches it was for us. All in all
the climb was very cool but very committing and remote. So if you can
deal with our cascade rock, and you don't want to see another soul for
the entire weekend, climb the route that sees maybe one ascent per year!
But beware the potential epic if you break something bigger than a pinky!
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