| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-07-10 01:12:27 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Ben Ingram Micky Bazydlo Eric Gilbertson Woody Hoburg West Ridge of Mt. Conness, 5.6, 12,590' That's Conness with an accent on the SECOND syllable, not the first. Our apologies for our initial mispronunciations. Micky is feeling all Alpine Starty, so it's up at 3:45 am, down a pop-tart, and hit the road. Park just outside the part border, walk through a nice walk-in campground and beautiful trail across some meadows, before leaving the trail in favor of a bushy gully that gains us some altitude. We continue up toward a ridge, following the quidebook perfectly, until we reach a spot where we expect a "big sandy plateau". We've reached a somewhat flat spot, but it is not big, or sandy. Ugh. We appear to be lost. The guide book says we should cross the sandy plateu and look for an indistinct gully. Micky starts looking around at various gullies. Ben triangulates our position on the topo using lakes. I eat a granola bar. Finally Eric says "maybe we should keep going up". We do, and arrive at a big sandy plateu. Sweet. We're probably within a thousand feet of the summit at this point, but our route starts far below. So it's down a steep gully we go, along the incredible southwest face, and to the base of the route. There is one party ahead of us, already started up the route. The start looks like it might have a few tricky moves, so we pitch it out for a few pitches. We are soon passed by a couple absurdly fast rope teams (good example!), and a couple free-soloists. Our two rope teams (Ben and Micky; Eric and I) are moving well and only getting in each other's way occasionally. The climbing becomes amazing after a few pitches as it crosses several exposed ridge sections. I'm all scared of simuling (I'll be in the lead and Eric has been climbing very few times), but I finally suck it up and we start to simul (need to move fast to avoid thundershowers). Eric does a fantastic job, letting me know when it's getting tricky and I should place pro, and quickly going from pitches back and forth to simuling a few times. By this point Micky and Ben are ahead of us and waiting on the summit. We arrive, and Ben takes a summit nap. Eric, Micky, and I make fun of some fools trying to practice self arrests on the next mountain over (one guy's ice axe rips out of his hands as he goes tumbling out of control. It appears they're not getting hurt so it's great summit entertainment. Soon after, Ben wakes up and we head out. Ben, Micky, and (reluctantly) Eric all jump in freezing cold water (Saddlebag Lake) while I stand around wussing out. |