SE face & ridges

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2.1 miles RT, 2300' gain. (per GPS)

4 hours total time, moving as quickly as we could, with only 2 small breaks.

This might just be some of the most sustained scrambling I've done anywhere, let alone JeffCo. As you can tell from the stats, the route we went up is STEEP. The rock is primarily Quartzite, and is ridiculously hard, and the vast majority is bomber quality, albeit there are some fractured pieces to be aware of. There is a small turn-out off of 72 where several (10?) cars can fit, and we parked here. This route is the middle ridge of the SE face in the bowl of Crescent Mountain. You are immediately forced to cross the creek, but usually it isn't flowing like a death torrent like it was today. With some luck hopping and crossing, we avoided having to hike up in wet shoes. With that, up we went. What a cool route! The scrambling is always at least 3rd class, with options for 4th and low 5th (to upper 5th if you bring ropes). Once again, I recommend not climbing up what you can't downclimb. This peak has so many ridges and ways up that you need to pay attention to not get cliffed out (which happens easily and often). We ascended up the central rib and stuck to the solid rock as much as possible, avoiding the scree and talus slopes for most of the ascent. The rock inspires confidence as there are many perfectly level holds all over the place. The rock is unbelievably slick when either wet or with your boots wet, and therefore not a good place to scramble in those conditions. We eventually did have to drop off the ridge and circle around a cliff either to the west (1st time) or east (2nd time), but quickly got back on the rock. Toward the top 200', the angle relents, and puts you on the false summit to the south. The true summit is still .11 miles to the north and about 75' higher. A quick jaunt over there through a several foot deep snow drift :eek: brought us to the summit, my 52nd ranked Jeffco Peak. The summit register, placed in 3/04 by Mr. Garratt, had only 7 signatures since that time. This peak doesn't see many summits, but is [I]so[/I] worthwhile. We had a quick snack, and seeing it was already 6:30, boogied down back to the false summit. We took stock of the surroundings, and decided that the quickest way down was probably the loose talus/scree gully we had worked so hard to avoid. We reasoned that it would avoid getting cliffed out in the dark, and we knew it led directly to the cars, so down we went. We were pleasantly surprised that it was as solid as it was and not as difficult as it first appeared. You could even go up that way, although it wouldn't be much fun. We went down quickly and efficiently, until a 75lb rock that I had already walked by decided to roll into the back of my knee. Neat! That felt super! I kept it from rolling down onto Ryan, and motored on, picking up a little trash on the way, and arrived at the bottom and hopped across the still raging tiny creek, just barely avoiding wet feet. We arrived at the bottom at 8:00p.m.

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