| Gored on the Ripsaw Trip Report |
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| Gored on the Ripsaw   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Colorado, United States, North America Lat/Lon: 39.73160°N / 106.3204°W Date Climbed/Hiked: Aug 14, 2004 | Page By: truchas Created/Edited: Aug 22, 2004 / Object ID: 169560 Hits: 571 Loading... Page Score: 84.77% - 4 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
School starts on Thursday so I had one more opportunity to get up to Colorado before it started. I am a glutton for punishment so my plan was to drive up on Friday the 13th, climb on Saturday the 14th, then drive home on the 15th. I wanted more of a challenge so I had narrowed down my options to two. Either Jagged or Peaks E,F, and G in the Gores. I contemplated doing Jagged on the same day as Forrest, but he was climbing it on Friday, a day earlier than I could make it up there, plus it would require me to bring my backpack. Thus, I chose to do a day hike of E, F, and G in the Gores and do them by traversing a ridge called the Ripsaw Ridge. Not only would it be challenging, it would test my routefinding skills.
I climbed Peak C last year and had marvelled the Ripsaw Ridge from the summit. The funnest looking portion of the ridge looked like E to G, which is approximately half of it, and since I had already done C, and D was the least prominant of the peaks on the ridge, I chose E to G. I left Texas at 5:20 a.m. (4:20 a.m. Colorado time), cranked up some Symphony X “Divine Wings of Tragedy”, and arrived at the trailhead parking lot at around 8:20 p.m. (Colorado time), an approximate 16 hour drive. This is what the Ripsaw Ridge looked like on the drive in to Piney Lake.
At the parking lot I met SummitPost member Brent Doerzman and his friend Glen who were there for a photography Expedition. We all car camped in the parking lot and went to sleep around 10:30 p.m. with a brilliant Milky Way night with several shooting stars streaking through the sky. With no moon, the sky was unbelievable and Venus as bright as I have ever seen it.
I left the truck at 4:20 a.m. and hiked up to the Mt. Powell cutoff. My camera that I had tied to my backpack was MISSING! My Boy Scout knot tying didn't work!. I quickly retraced my steps and withing 7 minutes of an adrenaline rush hike I found it lying in the middle of the trail. Pheeeew. Close call.
At 7 a.m. I found the stream I had decided via topo map that would be my route. I had no idea what it would look like, but it turned out to be a gully with a small stream cascading down it. I climbed up the stream (class 2 and 3 with a class 4 more here and there.) At the top of the stream I a found gully which would lead me to the Ripsaw Ridge just below the false summit of E. This is my view of E's subpeak and E as I made the ridge.
This was my first intimidating view. I scrambled over Peak E's false summit and on over to the summit of Peak E over 3rd and one or two 4th class moves and arrived at the summit at 10:15 a.m. The climb up and the traverse took more time than I had expected but the weather was looking great. From E, the traverse over to F and G looked daunting. I found a steel summit register that was placed there in August of 1948. Since then, there were only 4 pages of names on the register. I was the 4th person to climb E this year with John Prater being the last on July 31st. Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I proceeded.
It took me 1 hour and 45 minutes to get to F from E. It was difficult, time consuming, and treacherous in places. I couldn't stay directly on the ridge. Some of the towers were lower and mid 5th class cliimbs that I probably could have climbed, but I didn't know what I would find on the other side and I wouldn't want to have to retrace my steps and downclimb the 5th class stuff. So to avoid the 5th class towers, I down climbed some very steep gullies to the right and and traversed across many aretes coming down from the ridge into gully after gully. Still, much of the climbing was on difficult 4th class stuff. I finally reached Peak F at noon very relieved. Here is a look back at the ridge from E to F.
From F, I downclimbed some loose and nasty stuff and then scrambled over some difficult 4th and one or 2 lower 5th class sections near the summit of G and arrived at 1:30 p.m. Here is a picture of G from E. Peak Q is in the background to the left.
At this point, I decided to downclimb a very steep gully but with some tundra in it. This tundra led me to believe it wasn't going to be too difficult. Wrong! I ended up downclimbing some lower 5th class sections with some vary airy ledges to negotiate. I realized later I should have retraced my steps back to the F/G saddle and then downclimbed the gully that separated the two peaks.
Once I finally made it to the gully between F and G, the terrain was far less steep but very nasty. Big boulders the size of refrigerators would move and the smaller stuff would slide. I dislodged a huge rock and had to jump out of the way before it ran over me. I finally made it down to Piney Creek by 4 p.m. and found the trail. 3 more hours of hiking with tore up feet and I finally made it back to the trailhead at 7 p.m. Over 14 hours of climbing. I was pooped.
Brent and Glen had arrived probably an hour and 1/2 before I did and were taking pictures of the sunset so I joined them. Here is my pic. Peak E is the higher looking peak on the ridge in the right 1/4 of the photo. F is small but visible to the right of E. G is not visible.
I followed Brent and Glan back into Frisco and we had an excellent burger and a beer at the Moosejaw Bar and Grill. I said goodbye to some really cool new friends and drove back to Dallas arriving at 2 a.m. Monday morning. I slept here and there along the way.
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Gore Range
