Thursday, May 3, 2012

East Ridge of Mt. Humphrey's- The Hard Way















One of the good things about using Peter Croft's The Good, the Great and the Awesome High Sierra climbing guidebook, is that it will make you laugh, and virtually ensure that you still have a fun adventure, since it contains almost no useful beta!  

Describing the drive up to McGee Creek as "probably fun for four wheel drive fools sippin' Budweiser and wearing camouflage hats", Croft hits the nail on the head.  It was kinda fun, and me and Andrew were sippin on Buds as we crawled at 15 mph up the gnarly old 4wd road.  Too bad we missed a crucial turn and ended up starting the approach way off route, adding around 4 extra cross-country miles to the day.  Whoops.

The route itself is pretty dang cool, especially when you do the full ridge, and stick to it the whole way.  The climbing seems to get better as you go, with some fun crack climbing up near the summit at 13,986ft.  

The descent was a test of patience- the bottom had dropped out of the snow, so we were postholing down to the bottom of the snowpack- around crotch deep for a couple hours.  Fun stuff.
We found the correct approach on the way down, and after 10 hours on the move car to car, made a bee line to Whiskey Creek for dinner. 





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