The approach through the basin above Blue Lakes is great and easy to follow. In the "middle basin", where all the big blocky cliffs are, trend climber's left instead of right. There's still a surprising amount of snow but all of it can be avoided by zig-zagging through the cliffs. In the upper basin I went for the "Drift"/Fletcher saddle to do "Drift" first. This was straight forward and not that loose. Finding the down climb to cross the gully (where the old mining eyebolt is) was easy. After that, however, is when things got serious. The Class 3 climbing up the white rock was quite heady and steep. I thought it harder than Class 3, personally; there was a huge amount of route finding, much of the rock was loose and/or slabby with poor hand/footholds, and every ledge was covered in dirt/scree/gravel that made things sketchy. I didn't climb all the way to the ridge crest by going up climber's left as shown in the route description, as the rock got VERY loose in what I assumed to be the correct final gully/chimney, so I down climbed and took a rather low angle (nearly flat, actually) slab around a corner. This was incredibly exposed but easy. From there the route returned to Class 2, but be careful, the blocks on the west side of the ridge are large and loose. Returning the way I came up was not nearly as difficult as getting up it in the first place.
|
