Mount Baldy V

Mount Baldy traverse

February 29, 2004

Mountain height:        2,192 m
Elevation gain:           approx. 1,100 m in total
Round-trip time:         9:50
Round-trip distance: 8.5 km

Scrambling and mountaineering with Mark and Holland.

I never would have thought that a traverse of the this minor mountain would turn into a 10 hour mountaineering epic

We took everything but the kitchen sink with us, to ensure that we would finally be able to complete the north to south to west peak traverse of Mount Baldy – rope, harnesses, protection. And when all was said and done…..we came up a bitter 5 m short of the third and final west peak.

The north summit was easily attained (as usual!) and the weather best perfect – clear skies, mild temperatures. The fun started as we began the somewhat treacherous downclimb to the connecting ridge, en route to the south summit. There was a fair amount of snow remaining on the slopes and so we set up an anchor and I started to rappel down. About halfway down, I slipped, putting all my weight on the rope, and the rock we were using as an anchor moved. We found another rock and I rappelled to the bottom, followed by Holland and then Mark. The next section involved traversing very steep, snow-covered slopes towards the narrow ridge. The exposure here was a significant factor, as a slip on the snow would have sent you down a very steep chute to certain death. Again, we used the rope, and Holland carefully made his way over to the ridge. It was easy for Mark and me to follow because we used good tree anchors on both sides of the traverse. Ten more minutes of scrambling along the narrow and sometimes exposed ridge took us to the low point, where the ridge widened considerably, providing an easy route to the south summit.

By the time we reached the south peak, it was already after 2 pm and we had now been on the mountain for almost 6 hours. The traverse to the west peak started off well, but increased in difficulty when the snow deepened to knee to waist levels. We tackled the ascent of the west peak head-on. At the beginning, that was some great hands-on, steep scrambling. We continued up using slings for protection until we were very close to the summit. Here, a smooth rock face has to be traversed around the left side to get to the summit. Unfortunately, snow-cover rendered the short and exposed traverse quite dangerous and Mark had to turn back. The only other chance was to ascend the vertical rock face up a crack in the middle. I tried in futility for about ten minutes before giving up. I completely forgot about the TCU’s (spring-loaded cams) I had brought with me. I’m sure we could have made it up with the aid of one of them. By this time, the clear sky was no longer, and it started to snow - lightly at first and then quite heavily. A fast retreat was definitely in order!

The descent was not a terribly pleasant one. We managed to glissade down a fair portion of the north facing slopes, between the north and south peaks, but we were soon postholing in deep snow. 9 hours and 50 minutes after leaving the car, we returned. Overall, a great day of basic mountaineering, but coming up 5 m short of the only summit of Mount Baldy’s we had not been on before, was a bitter pill to swallow. At least, we survived to try again!