Jakeb5260 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 12:41 amCan anyone here who has done Granite talk about this crux section?
I climbed
Granite and
Borah back-to-back this past August.
We climbed Granite via the southern approach spending one night camped at Sky Top Lakes. We were lucky to catch the southwest ramp completely dry. While we walked across some soft low-angle snow descending below the ramp, we climbed around the snow which was hard on our way up. For us, the crux climbing in the southwest ramp couloir was at most difficult class 3 in a couple of places and with minimal exposure. Thanks to beta we got from climbers hiking out, we didn't carry a rope beyond our camp and we didn't need one. There are plenty of loose rocks in the couloir and with other climbers around, there is the danger of rockfall. Both of my partners got dinged by rocks on their helmets in the couloir. But we climbed on a prime Saturday in August and there were about a dozen climbers on the route. My sense is that completely dry conditions on this route are rare. But if you get lucky as we did, Granite from the south is a very long (and beautiful) hike, with lots and lots of boulder hopping, and a fun class 3 scramble to the summit. I highly recommend this approach and route!
Borah was comparable to a more difficult Colorado 14er, but it didn't seem as difficult as Pyramid to me. Like Granite, the route was completely dry for me. The class 3 scrambling on Chicken Out Ridge was fun and never very difficult or very exposed. While I did a short easy class 4 scramble up to COR from the saddle on our return, I could have avoided that. From what I understand, crampons or microspikes will be useful on Borah most of the time.
Details in the linked reports.