Kyes Peak - south "ridge" October 26, 2002
The view from the summit of Kyes Peak
The end of October, and still no snow in sight. Fair weather expected for Saturday, with fog
down in the valleys. I'd never been in the Monte Cristo range before, so it seemed like a good
thing to do. Kyes sounded easy, and doable in a day, so Kyes it was.
Ed and I, and his two dogs, left the trailhead in the morning twilight (around 7:15). I was a little concerned
about whether the dogs would be able to make it up scrambly parts, and whether they'd be able
to deal with steepy icy snow - we had brought crampons and axe in case we encountered any.
Ed didn't think we would... but you never know, do you?
Morning light on the hike. What a big tongue you have, Zack!
The hike up to Virgin Lake was quick. Ed had another name for this scummy-looking pond.
The morning was crisp and the thin layer of ice covered most of the pond.
From here we headed north along the forested ridgeline. Easy walking, and there was a
climbers path to follow. The ridge soon looked like it became "all craggy and stuff", and
we wondered what would happen to the climbers path. It went like this: steep traverses on
heather, followed by tunnelling up blocky dirt paths through the trees. The plethora of
tree branches added security, and it was kind of fun. I let Ed and the dogs go far in front
of me, due to the dog-induced rockfall danger.
Mt. Columbia (left) and Kyes Peak (right), from somewhere along
the approach.
But then we reached a bit of an impasse. A wider dirty rocky slope with a "cruxy" move up a block on top.
No problem for a human, and actually no problem for Maya, who by-passed it in the trees on the left.
But it was a problem for Zack. He just wouldn't go for it. So there I was, perched on slippery dirt
and rocks, with Zack running around above me, trying different things, kicking down shit. I didn't
want to head up, for fear he'd start following me and running into me as I was doing the crux move.
Eventually, Zack attempted the blocky move on top with more gusto than his previous attempts, and fell!
He went sliding down the slippery slope, and performed a hockey stop within an inch or two of
a 15ft fall off a cliff! Yikes!
I took advantage of this moment to complete the move, and passed Ed to let him deal with Zack. Finally
Zack made it through the trees, but I was worried how he'd do on the upcoming terrain, if he was
having so much trouble on the "approach".
Easy walking in the meadwos, with "Glacier" Peak in the background.
The terrain mellowed out into nice ridgetop meadows, followed by a descent around the left side
of an even more craggy section of ridgeline - a little brushy here, with tedious sidehilling on
steep heather. Finally we reached the 5400ft col below the final steepening of the ridge
leading up to Kyes. This is a scenic place, with a 2000ft cliff on your right. However, the
ridge in front of us looked ok - more meadowy than craggy.
So up we went, intending to traverse into the gentle basin west of Kyes. Cliffs kept barring
the way though. Finally, they vanished and we walked easily into gentle meadow.
The gentle basin to the west of Kyes. The false summit is in the background on the left,
with the real summit a quarter mile behind.
We traversed
on easy talus, slab and snow, to a wide shallow gully of sorts that looked to be the only easy
way up to the ridge proper. It was steeper, with hard snow, so the crampons went on here. The dogs
had no trouble, and soon we were on the ridgetop, admiring the steep step in front of us.
Traversing around a step in the ridge.
It looked difficult, but instead, an exposed traverse on a gravelly ledge system led around it
on the right, and then onto snow.
Then it was easy going on snow to the summit block. As we were going easy, we tried to guess how
one would climb the summit block. The most probably way, looked to be in the Houses Of The Holy-esque
blocks on the right side. The south side (facing us) looked to be a vertical mud cliff.
Ed went over there, probing a line up through the blocks. The dogs stayed back on the snow (mostly).
Approaching the summit block.
Meanwhile, the direct ridge looked fairly low angle when viewed in profile, so I went up that way.
It was extremely exposed on the left, dropping several hundred feet vertically to a glacier. Soon,
my hiking boots were having difficulty getting a grip on the pebbly surface. I backed down.
The rock here is weird. It's like someone smushed together golf-ball sized pebbles. It's quite
textured and grippy, and not necessarily loose, except that there is lots of surface
debris, making things slick. There are also no opportunities for pro - and if there was, the rock
probably would not be solid enough for it - if you are determined enough, you can peel away the
pieces.
Rock.
I walked over towards Ed, who was now facing "an overhanging wall with no way around". He climbed down
the blocks and joined me below, where we ate a small bite, and decided to have another go
at the summit just right of the crest. A series of ledges looked like they might provide passage
up to a final steep step.
I went up first, intending to stay well ahead of Ed and dogs, but they passed me, and were soon
kicking down crap again. I found a good ledge and waited. Ed reached a gravelly ledge of
sorts that cut across the face. He walked back and forth, tring to find a way up the more blocky
terrain in front of him. It looked like spires of bird shit. He said "I could go up, but I'm not
sure I could get back down". The ledge he was on continued to the right, but very exposed.
Navigating the summit block.
The dogs probably didn't know this though, and we running around on the "slab" everywhere. It
wasn't very steep, but it was slick with surface debris, and immediately above fairly-certain-death-or-serious-head-trauma
cliff. As Ed was looking around, all of a sudden, we saw Maya had made it to the summit ridge.
Then Zack too. They were walking around like "what's the problem dudes?". I didn't want to move
for fear of incurring dog-induced rockfall, but Ed scampered along the exposed ledge, and onto
a little ridge-protrusion.
From here, he ascended to near the summit... sometimes on all fours! He kicked footholds into the
surface material and made progress to another exposed ledge that led to the highest point. He said
it wasn't "too bad". Once he claimed to have the dogs under control, I began the ascent... which,
wasn't "too bad", but exposed, and more than a little gripping. Maybe this Monte-Cristoian rock just
takes some getting used to.
Some solid Cascade rock!
Thus ends the most over-explained and over-stated description of the summit block of Kyes in
the world. Beckey calls it class 2, or class 3,
depending which route description you read. I suppose, but, it was more exposed and scary
than much stuff which is called class 4. Unless you have paws and claws.
Clear day, you can see all the way to the Canadian border.
We cracked open the summit register, and found we were the 11th party to summit this year, and the first
in over a month. There was an entry from a Mountaineers ice climb, up the Pride Glacier. We
peered over the dark north face, down to the glacier, and were duly impressed.
Look down from the summit at part of the Pride Glacier.
The views were spectacular of course (except for Glacier Peak, which from this vantage should be
called Brown Scree Peak), and we could see that the fog still enveloped the Puget Sound basin.
Soon it was time to go down. It took a while. Going down was more scary than up, and I had a
good case of "dry mouth" upon reaching our packs down below.
Monte Cristo Peak.
Back at the 5400ft col, we tried following the climbers path along the ridgeline, but soon decided
this was a stupid and tedious choice, so we backtracked and reversed our morning route along the
brushy benches to the west. And once within sight of "Virgin" Lake, so close to the easy
trail, we missed a sharp turn and ended up surrounded by cliffs on three sides. A thorough
investigation of all three sides determined this was not the way we came. We backtracked and
found where we had gone wrong.
Ed on the descent (silhouetted in front of Blanca Lake). The approach
follows the ridge at left and center (from behind Blanca Lake).
At 5:15, we passed a group of campers near "Virgin" Lake, who expressed suprise that we were
heading all the way back down to the road today - they said it had taken them all day to get
up here!
We reached the truck at 6:15, just as darkness fell. We now had reason to feel
good about ourselves
again, after that bout of lameness on the summit block.