| my buddy Chad and I climbed this route during incredibly calm, warm, spring conditions. We camped near Green Butte (~9500') and left for the summit around 2:15am. We encountered lots of fast-moving snow ridge on the lower portion, slowly progressing into exposed rock scrambling as the route merges with Sargents ridge. Some traversing around the upper pinnacles of the ridge tied us into Thumb Rock and the normal route. All in all a fun climb. I agree with the class 3 rating. There was some snow travel for short stretches on 50deg and longer stretches on 35deg. We topped out at 9:30am, which felt like an average ascent time.
The east side of lower GBR is open to snowmobiles, so don't expect too much solitude if you're in that neighborhood late morning-early evening on weekends.
As for descent, we opted not to deal with downclimbing the route and its rocks, which were frozen in the morning but likely not frozen in the late morning and afternoon. We descended the oven that is Avalanche Gulch and made a diagonal descending traverse from 10500' towards GBR at approx 10000'. This worked out well. |
California Cascades