Hasn't voted | before doing this route, we read three different options for descents, one from peter croft and two from sp parker. they all seemed overly confusing, and in one of parkers descriptions, potentially wrong. here is our descent, which was generally easy, straightforward, and involved nothing harder than class 3. from the summit, head north on the ridge until you are blocked by a 20 ft. high wall. head left and slightly down on easy ledges for ~50 feet until you see a slung chockstone with carabiners. single rope rappel into the 3rd class gully. from these first anchors, look across the gully to the ridge on its opposite side; you will see another slung chockstone with white/yellow webbing. after your first rappel, head generally across the gully to these anchors. single rope rappel into the next gully over. from here, you can 3rd class it down and left to the obvious notch at the top of the ken/clyde couloir. 3rd class down this to a single rope rappel on your right. 3rd class again until you hit a huge chockstone; parker calls this a double rope rappel, in fact it was a short single rope rappel. maybe a double rope rappel in early season with a lot of snow in the gully, but there are anchors down lower as well, if needed. from here, scree/talus down to cecile lake. i'm sure this description can be condensed quite a bit. also, for the approach from minaret lake, you can follow cairns up the right side of the slope from minaret lake, through easy talus/trail to get to cecile lake. takes about 20 minutes. |