Thu, Apr 13, 2023
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On my second day in the New York Mtns, I planned a 3-peak tour around Keystone Canyon. Most folks to the same area are heading to the DPS summit (also the range highpoint), while my summits were the neglected cousins around the canyon. I thought the outing would be about 5mi and take half a day, but it turned out to be a much more involved effort thanks to Peak 7,224ft (later I named this as Twin Towers). I had seen in the satellite view that it was a pretty rugged area, but I vainly hoped it would be easier than it looked. Ha!
The first summit, Peak 6,207ft was pretty tame, much like the summits
the previous afternoon. It took only 45min to find my way to
the summit,
having climbed fairly directly
from the south, once I'd
left the road. Smatko and Lilley had climbed this peak together in 1977,
but if they left a register, I found no sign of it. I used
one of mine,
adding their names to it. From the summit, I had a good view of
Peak 7,224ft and could see that the rocky towers looked tough. I knew
that Smatko and MacLeod had climbed it, so figured there must be a scramble
route up it somewhere. I spent about half an hour following the connecting
ridgeline, my planned route between the first two summits. This worked
well
for a while, but I began to think this might not be the easiest
course, and started traversing off on
the east side of the ridge where
it looked to get harder. I went in and out of several gullies and gradually
concluded this didn't seem much easier. The higher elevations had pinyon and
juniper trees crowding
the slopes, along with a good deal of large
granite rocks to slow things down. I rolled a rock onto my shin which
drew first blood, but it would hardly be the last. I managed to bleed from about
a dozen wounds on my arms, head, and legs. I bonked my head on rocks and tree
branches throughout the morning, struggling across the slopes. It was 10a by the
time I worked my way across the slopes and and was looking up at my
objective. LoJ had the southern of two points as the highpoint, so I worked my
way around the first one, not realizing the two are of nearly equal height. I
made two efforts to climb
steep gullies on the southeast side of the
south tower, getting in
over my head on both attempts. I eventually had
to come up with another plan, which was to
traverse around the towers
to the southwest so I could see if there were easier routes on the backside.
Upon reaching a saddle on the main ridge, I was at first dismayed by the sight
of imposing walls in the direction of the towers. After descending
a short distance on the other side of the ridge, I could see there were various
chutes that might offer a way up.
My route was not the
easiest, because I was uncertain exactly where the two towers were at this
point, but I eventually worked
my way up to the notch between the two,
having found one
class 4 section along the way, and some challenging
brush/class 3 combos. From the notch, reaching either summit seemed
improbable. But I was having great fun, despite being nearly exhausted,
bloodied, and short on water (I had brought only 20oz of Gatorade), thinking
this was some of the best scrambling and route-finding I'd had in a long while.
Still thinking the south tower was the highpoint because LoJ had it listed as
so, I tackled that first, with a great deal more
class 3 and class 4
scrambling up
the North Face and across
an airy ledge and
exposed corner to get myself to
the summit by 11:45a. To my
surprise,
the north tower seemed higher. I looked around for a MacLeod
register, but not finding one, guessed he'd gone to the north tower. I left
a register on the south tower and headed
back down to the
notch.
Once at the notch, I went around to the east side of the north tower,
finding no reasonable way up there. I settled on
the south side, with a
short
class 4 move and much more exposed class 3 that eventually saw
me to
the summit by 12:15p. Almost 45min between the two towers
separated by maybe a hundred yards. Tough going. I found the MacLeod register
from 1983 on the north tower, noting that a party from Idaho had found
there way up in 2006. I took a few photos and beat a retreat, because I was
still nervous about reversing all the class 4 sections. It was after 1p before
I returned to the saddle on the main ridge and retrieved
my poles. Boy,
was I tired. I still wanted to get to the third summit, so I headed off in
that direction.
I had to traverse more difficult slopes with brush, large granite
blocks, small cliffs and various obstacles, but I finally
got through
this tough stretch after about 40min. I landed on some light-colored rock
on the ridge that
leads to Peak 6,512ft, and from here to the
summit it was much
easier travel. I landed on this
last summit
around 2:45p, finding the remains of a wooden pole from the surveyors doing the
spot elevation, but no register. I left
the last one I carried with me
before
starting down to the north. I followed the ridge a short
distance before dropping
into the drainage on the north side of the
summit. This led into a steep gully with lots of short dryfalls and more
unexpected scrambling. I eventually popped out onto
the old mining road
that I could follow down to Keystone Canyon and out to the Jeep. It was after
3:30p by the time I
was finished, hours longer than I expected. I still
had about 4hrs of daylight, so figured I should try to get in another peak or
two.
Continued...
This page last updated: Mon Apr 17 09:15:15 2023
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