Ontario Peak, Ollestad Canyon

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Sam Page

 
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Ontario Peak, Ollestad Canyon

by Sam Page » Fri Mar 19, 2010 10:54 pm

In the last week, some SoCal locals (me included) completed two long snow climbs on an obscure drainage on the northwest side of Ontario Peak (near Mt. Baldy). We were inspired by reading Crazy for the Storm about a plane crash in that drainage. The author, Norman Ollestad, was the sole survivor. The drainage is between Cherry Canyon and Kerkhoff Canyon. Since I could find no name for the drainage, I've tentatively called it Ollestad Canyon. Both routes involved 3000 vertical feet of continuous snow climbing from 30-50 degrees, in addition to roughly 1500 vertical feet of approaching.

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Here are my trip reports for the right branch and the left branch.

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graham

 
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by graham » Sat Mar 20, 2010 4:30 pm

Nice work Sam, thanks for sharing; and thanks for the link to the Norman Ollestad story. I was living in Claremont in 1979 and don't remember that plane crash, dang memory!


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