Tue, Nov 6, 2012
|
With: | Matthew Holliman |
"Great West Chimney, Class 4. Leave the Sugarloaf Trail and climb onto the low, southwest ridge of the peak. Follow the crest of the ridge and climb into the chimney that splits the peak. When the difficulties in the chimney increase, crawl under a chockstone. Two more chockstones follow through narrow, cavelike passages. These secret passages lead to a large dark room. A chimney within the Great West Chimney leads up and out of the room to the south. Scramble north to the high point of the peak. Headlamps are recommended."
This sounded more like a caving experience than a climbing one, and when Matthew first pointed me to it, I wanted to go there. We made a first attempt in October of the previous year, but recent snow had made the going awful and I begged a retreat after we'd been out a few hours. Matthew reluctantly agreed on the condition that I would come back again in the future to climb it with him. A year later, early November found us with an available day to give it a second shot. Because he had only a single day to devote to the Sierra, we drove out separately from the Bay Area. Leaving several hours later than Matthew, I found him already asleep in his Subaru parked off the Big Meadows Rd along Horse Corral Creek sometime around midnight. I parked my van behind him and went to sleep myself for the next 4-5hrs. In the morning we would leave my van and take Matthew's car to the trailhead. The dirt road is steep and somewhat rough. I've driven my cars to the TH several times in the past, but even a little bit of snow, ice or mud makes it a scary propostion. No trouble at all in the Subaru.
There was snow on the ground at the Marvin Pass TH when we started at
6:45a but not so much as that last time. In fact once we got to
Marvin Pass and started down the south side, there was virtually no
snow to be found. This was going to be a lot easier. It was a nice hike down to
the trail junction for Rowell Meadows, then east into the
National Park and down towards
Sugarloaf Valley. It had warmed
just enough to make for pleasant hiking with a bright blue sky overhead. We
passed by several more
trail junctions and crossed over
the creek before Sugarloaf
came into view before 9a. We left
the trail where a camping area with bearbox is found just west of the
Sugarloaf's low SW Ridge. We followed
a use trail through the camp
until it disappeared on the slabby slopes of
the ridge where we found
easy walking up to the
South Face of Sugarloaf.
At this point we were right at the base
of the route but I was confused. I had
assumed the West Chimney would be on the west side of Sugarloaf, not the south
side. Matthew had the route description written on a piece of paper, so after
reading it, the route seemed to make more sense. There were actually two
chimneys splitting the mountain and it wasn't obvious which was correct. The
leftmost seemed harder but made sense of the name, "West" Chimney.
Up we went. We got as far as 15ft up the route before running into the
first chockstone, but there was no way to crawl under this one as the
description seemed to suggest. Perhaps we hadn't gotten to "where the
difficulties increase"? Matthew went first over the chockstone, awkwardly
hauling himself up on the left side. It was fun to watch him, mostly to
make fun of his technique. Above this was a
short scramble to a second
chockstone which was managed with a bit
more aplomb. We were getting
into the groove of things (pun intended) for the next five minutes until the
route was suddenly blocked by
a large bush. It was surprisingly dense,
growing from a crack and spreading branches out in all directions. First Matthew
tried, then I tried, then we both stepped back and began to doubt the route
again. There were no signs that anyone had been here before us, no ducks, no
footprints, not a single broken branch on this massive bush. I looked to the
right to see if we could get into the East Chimney, but saw only a very exposed
way to do so - we were not ready for such dicey manuevers so early in the
program.
Above the bush all was dark inside a chimney that looked
much harder than the class 4 rating. Matthew suggested the crawlthrough might
be just above the bush, out of view. But how to reach it?
After much hemming and hawing, and satisfied that other options didn't look any
better, I decided to give the bush another try. If there was a technical rating
for bushwhacking, this would probably rate a class 4 - just short of requiring
saws and loppers. I mostly pulled myself up by the small branches, grabbing
them in as a large a handfull as I could manage to increase their combined
strength. Had they broken off I would have tumbled backwards and smashed my head
on the rocks below. That would not only have been quite painful, but would have
made a mess, and inconvenienced Matthew besides. Luckily they held nicely. Once
I was past the bush I could confirm that there was indeed a small crawlspace.
It was too dark to see far even with the headlamp. Since we still weren't sure
we were on the correct route, I suggested Matthew wait while I checked it out.
I had to take off my pack to fit through the small opening, then scrambled up
to some rocks overlooking the bush and Matthew below. Another crack led deeper
into the chimney. This was beginning to sound like the description. I called
for Matthew to join me. He struggled with the bush for a good ten
minutes, his
perseverance paying off on the third or fourth try. Past
the bush he passed both packs through the hole before crawling in himself.
Things grew darker, narrower and increasingly more difficult. The second
crawlthrough wasn't a hole but a thin gap between massive granite
blocks. It went in horizontally perhaps 15ft before abruptly ending, the only
way out going up a narrow opening above. The gap was so thin that it was
impossible to turn one's head around once in - I had to back all the way out
before I could turn it to the right for a second try. I had to leave not only
the pack off, but the GPS in my pocket and the camera on my belt had to be
removed as these would get stuck in the narrow passage. At the end of the
passage I had to mantle my way out of the hole into a larger space where I
could breath and wait for Matthew to join me.
Matthew had a tougher
time because he had to push two packs through the tight squeeze
ahead of him. Once he reached
the vertical exit, he struggled
to figure out a way to
lift the packs up high enough so that I could
reach down and haul them out. Even once this was accomplished, it was no easy
feat to get out of the
birth canal - Matthew was still weak from a
dislocated shoulder and the awkward
mantling moves needed caused much
discomfort. With the help of me pulling him up by the armpits, he managed to
squeeze through.
We were only about halfway through at this point. We delved deeper into the
great chimney, passing upwards through a hole so small that the water bottles
had to be removed from the packs and passed up individually. This led
to a
broken chamber open to outside light, then once again horizontally
through
a second hole into the darkness again. I found myself in the
"large dark room", the last chamber before exiting through a south-facing
chimney. It really
wasn't much of a room and hardly large - it was more like a narrow corridor
that led off in two directions. The lefthand side led deeper into the
mountain and appeared to narrow such that even Matthew and I couldn't get our
skinny asses through. The right hand side seemed to lead to a similar impasse
until I recognized the south-facing exit chimney behind me on this side of the
hallway. Once Matthew joined me, we got out the rope and harnesses for the
exit. It turned out to be much easier than I had first thought thanks to a
convenient chockstone halfway up the 20-foot chimney along with some key
footholds. The rope probably could have been left in the pack.
Once above this crux section, I
belayed Matthew out
into the sunshine. It was all
class 3 from this point,
perhaps another 80yds or so of
scrambling to
the summit. It
had taken us five and half hours from the TH to reach the summit, two of those
hours in the West Chimney. We both thought it had been great fun, one I would
highly recommend.
We ate lunch while we lounged at the summit with a great view
overlooking
Sugarloaf Valley, The Great Western Divide from North
Guard to Centennial Peak behind it. Avalanche Peak and Palmer Mtn were to
the northeast, Sentinel Dome and Ridge to the north,
Silliman/Twin/Kettle Peaks to
the south and southwest. Mitchell Peak
was the dominant summit to
the west. There was no register that we
could find, so we left
a makeshift one - I had an extra jar
and pencil I'd taken from a summit with more than one, but had no notebook or
scrap of paper. We left our names on a bandage wrapper and tucked it under
some rocks.
I explored from the top the exit options on the various sides. The west side
was too steep to consider. The north side looked to be class 4 slabs while the
east and northeast sides offered easier class 3 options. We settled on a chute
off the NE side primarily because it wasn't described in Secor's book. Most of
it was class 2, but there was some class 3
off the summit and then a short class 3-4 section of maybe 15ft before
it becomes easier. While I found it fairly straightforward to get down into the
chute, Matthew wasn't too happy with the upper section, hesitating. Eventually I
climbed back up, we threw a sling
around a rock to allow Matthew to
rappel this part, then I packed up the sling and rope and rejoined
him. We scrambled
further down the chute until we were satisfied the
rest of
the way was easy, then
packed up the harnesses and
climbing shoes. Down at the bottom of the chute we passed around the east side
in a clockwise fashion before finding
the trail again around 1:30p.
An hour later we reached the trail junction for Ball Dome, the second
peak we had planned for the day. It was later than we had planned by this time
and it seemed likely it would be dark before we got back to the car. Since I
wasn't driving home tonight I let Matthew make the call - he decided to leave it
for another day and I was good with that - my shower jug would at least still be
warm when we got back. We took another
short break after the long
climb back out of Sugarloaf Valley, then passed into the Jennie Lakes Wilderness
for a few miles before hiking out over
Marvin Pass and back to
the trailhead at 4:10p. After dropping me back off at the van and
saying our goodbyes, Matthew headed home while I drove to the Big Meadows TH
about 8mi further west, closer to the Generals Highway. I planned to hike back
in to Jennie Lakes Wilderness to tag a few obscure peaks the next day before
heading home. I had the TH all to myself (the pit toilets at this location and
the nearby campgrounds are really quite deluxe - for pit toilets, anyway) and
enjoyed
the sunset and dinner with a movie before settling in to sleep
for the night. A good day, to be sure...
Continued...
For more information see these SummitPost pages: Sugarloaf
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