| Tieton Peak Attempt Trip Report |
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| Tieton Peak Attempt   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Lat/Lon: 46.52863°N / 121.4209°W Date Climbed/Hiked: Oct 13, 2006 Activities: Scrambling Season: Fall | Page By: tazz Created/Edited: Oct 21, 2006 / Oct 25, 2006 Object ID: 237128 Hits: 1551 Loading... Page Score: 89.59% - 20 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
At 5 am I hear crunch, crunch, rattle, rattle on my tent. “Tazz its time!” UUUGGGGHHHH! Thirty or so NWHikers are at a wilderness car camp on Bethel ridge near the Goat Rocks for a get together social. I drank way too much the night before and my body is pissed off at me. After drinking all night and 3 hours of sleep 6 of us are headed out for a scramble of Tieton peak (Bright idea Tazz. Smacks self in head! ) . I even succeeded in backing over Richards box of camp supplies in the dark..DOH! I killed his 25 year old peculator coffee pot among other things. Not starting the day out very well huh? After farting around at camp way too long we are on the road to the TH. We started a lot later than I planned.
I climbed Gilbert many years ago. Old Snowy and Ives via the ridge between the two several years back. Some of the nastiest scree and rock I have been on. Ives via the ridge from Old snowy was sketch in several spots and I took a small scary fall from the saddle to the west of Ives and almost went down into the crevassed Ives glacier. Gilbert was not any more fun with some rock fall and swimming in the steep scree. I knew Tieton was going to be lots of scree and loose rock but never found much beta for climbing it. Well there is a reason. Not too many climb it due to how nasty the terrain is.
We headed down the trail. It is a bit confusing as to whether to take the road or the trail to the next intersection. We chose the trail. Good choice because Conrad meadows was all glowing with Fall colors and aspen groves. The trail is very horsey and beat up quite a bit. Like hiking in sand.
We hiked through meadows and marshes that are wet and muddy. Then gained elevation up to 6500' or so. There is a path the whole way but it disappears and magically reappears later over and over again. It is easy to get off route if you are not paying attention. We got off route after arriving at the bench we needed to access Cold Lake basin. We dropped down missing the path on the right. Lost elevation and then started to work our way cross country towards the basin. We came to a very steep nasty scree/taus slope. The footing was poor. Almost every step a 3-5' square area around your feet slid down. Not fun but doable. Then we came to a small rock step that was exposed class three. The rock was some what solid but still loose and unpredictable. It was fun! (no fear!!)
Then we had to bushwhack our way through heavy, thick, low alpine fir for several 100 feet. After that we gained the bench we wanted and were home free. The meadows are beautiful with Gilbert front and center. We arrived at the lake awful late in the day. It was the turn around time for me( I was still hung over too*sigh*) and I didn’t want to slow down the guys who are in perfect shape. We had already gone 8+ miles. I was happy to hang out at the lake and explore while they ran up and tried for the summit.
Janet stayed with me and Brad headed up to the glacier to take pics. Tom Don and Randy headed up to scope it and out and give it a try.
This is Randy Busch's account of the rest of the climb towards the summit. They didn’t make it because the route sucked. If Randy and Don say it sucked it must have really sucked!From the lake Tom, Don and I headed up lake 150 yards before turning up slope into choss world. We booted up the rocks to the ridge then hoofed it over to the top of a red bump easily seen from the lake below. We stood and stared at Tieton for a while trying to self motivate. Eventually, it was decided that Tom would slide back down to the lake and head out with the others and Don and I would run the ridge and try and tuck in the peak. We dropped 150' to the NE down easy sand and scree to a little saddle at the base of some rotten crags. There were goats running the ridge just a few minutes in front of us and we used their well worn track to pick around and over the crumbling stacks of rock. On the other side, more open ridge got us up to a false summit of sorts where all we could see were piles of loose rock and crumbling crags. We dropped down 50' off the false summit to a saddle then discussed options. The goats had humped across a 70º rock face littered with scree just above some cliffs. We stopped following them at this point. Instead, we traversed left (~7500') on really loose golf ball and softball sized talus sending rivers of rock down the mountain as we went. When we came to an ugly little gully we swam our way up 50' or so until faced with piles of rock perched on more crumbling crags. We had a good chuckle at just how worthless and unmotivating the terrain was then traversed back over to the ridge just a couple hundred feet below the summit at a notch between two dogtooth spires. We found that handholds were removable on the up slope spire and decided there were better things to do with our time and headed out.
We headed back along the ridge a bit then dropped down 1200' to Conrad Creek. After tanking up on some water and getting the headlamps on standby we decided to make a loop trip out of the day and go back to the car via trail 1120. It added some miles to the round trip, but at least we'd get to see some new scenery. We jogged most of the 8 or so miles back to the cars making it back around 1830.
descentTom came down and joined us for the decent Randy and Don would catch us somewhere. We stayed high on the bench for the descent and didn’t have to cross the scree slope or the bushwhack. Just a nice meadow hike along a bench. On our decent we lost the path just after the bench and ended up headed way out of the way over 1/4 mile into this nasty ravine. We turned around and found it again. As you leave the bench there are many trails and paths intersecting from the elk and it is easy to loose it on the descent. We stopped a few time to see if Randy and Don would catch us but they never did. We arrived at the truck right as it got dark. We took the road for the last 1.5 miles so we didn’t have to use out headlamps. Once we arrived at the trucks Randy and Don are sitting on my tailgate. HUH? They did a loop and ran 8 miles of it and beat us back. Crazy nuts! (GRIN)
I had a great time with Janet, Randy, Tom, Don, and Brad. None of us summited but it was such a great day and so great to get out with these guys that I didn’t care. And I got some good beta to post! I think I will try this one via the East ridge when there is still snow in the spring. Might be better than swimming in scree and dealing with nasty rock.
Thanks guys and gal I had a blast!
GPS map almost 18mile RT to the highpoint after the saddleIt would be about 19.5-20 mile RT if one were to make it to the summit of Tieton. This GPS route take you to the high point on the SW ridge route just above Cold lake. Images
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