Route Information
The picture below is a zoom shot of Carney Peak's upper east face from Trail #656. As mentioned on the main page, this peak has a little of everything. This route page will try to do justice to the route we took up the east face of this fantastic mountain.
Hike up Trail #656 for just over 4 miles, gaining over 2000 feet, until reaching a pile of talus that crowds the trail from the right below the steep slopes of beargrass down low on Carney's east face. Looking straight ahead, before turning to your right to climb, is a beautiful look at Lost Buck Pass.
We began the off-trail portion of the route at the talus pile pictured above. The photo below shows JFKitty venturing up the steep beargrass slope. The line shows the approximate route to a dry drainage that we used to gain elevation past the lowest cliff band.
Approximate route to drainage
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When the footing in the drainage became less than stable we exited to the right into more steep beargrass and the beginning of the cliff bands and the trees. But first, a look back down the drainage at Upper Geiger Lake.
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We opted to climb through the cliffs to our left for a more direct route.
Approximate route upper face
This took us to the base of the actual summit block where JFKitty commenced to routefinding our way to the top...pictured below.
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Approximate route summit block
Upon reaching a platform just below the actual summit on the NE corner, walk through the slot, pictured below, and then make an immediate left and climb a short gully, make a right, and walk a few feet over large pieces of talus and you've gained the summit.
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The summit had a register contained in a an elaborate metal box. There were several entries from 2012. More than one of them said the following, "now that we're up here, how do we get down".
We kind of felt the same way and tried descending down the NE ridge after coming off the summit block, but we kept cliffing out, on somewhat unstable sidewalk-sized pieces of talus. We ended up having to work our way back around to the east face and hitting the approach route just below where we had picked up the drainage on the way up. Below, Lost Buck Pass on the descent.
| Terrain | One-Way Mileage | Elevation Gain |
|---|---|---|
| Trail #656 | 4.05 | 2073' | Bushwhack to Summit | .41 | 1223' | Total | 4.46 | 3296' |
Parting Shot
