Best Alpine Traverses in the Lower 48...

Will Watson wrote:North Carolina: Looking Glass and Laurel Knob both have traverses, or you can play "pick your anchors" and go for it.

If you're adding North Carolina, Whiteside Mountain has a traverse as well.

Have the 'Daks been covered yet? Surely there's something there?

Just to nip this in the bud... I am not interested in girdle traverses across rock faces. We're talking ridges that connect high points; preferably scrambles and easy solos. It's OK if they have a couple sections of harder climbing or snow/ice, but mainly easy rock or scrambling preferred. Solo mountain fitness type stuff.

The Grand Traverse in the Gore Range has a lot of good 3rd and 4th class...if you climb all the towers there's a little low 5th in there as well. Did it on a bluebird September day and didn't see a soul.

Alexey Dynkin wrote:The Grand Traverse in the Gore Range has a lot of good 3rd and 4th class...if you climb all the towers there's a little low 5th in there as well. Did it on a bluebird September day and didn't see a soul.

While I don't disagree, the Grand Traverse barely cracks top ten in the Gore as a scramble or alpine traverse. It's a well known intro scramble with a relatively easy approach/de-proach and route-finding. The route matches the OP's newest post, if not the thread title however.

Ryan Marsters wrote:The route matches the OP's newest post, if not the thread title however.

Yep, that's exactly why I mentioned it :)

Blitzen Ridge on Ypsilon in RMNP may be a good one to add to the list.

Jeff G. wrote:Blitzen Ridge on Ypsilon in RMNP may be a good one to add to the list.

Blitzen Ridge got mentioned a while ago. I agree, up Blitzen and down Donner is a great way to spend a day.

I re-wrote my original post to clarify.

So the Gore Grand Traverse is good but not classic?

And Blitzen Ridge - couldn't remember the name of it - did it back when I lived in Colorado and just referred to it as "The Four Aces", but Blitzen is correct... Super fun!

Mt Conness. Tuolumne.

With the new criteria, the WURL is actually perfect. Also in the Wasatch, traversing over all of the summits on Timpanogos is not that interesting technically, but it is beautiful and keeps you up high for a long time.

The Wilsons/El Diente in Colorado should definitely be on the list - add Gladstone too to make it even longer. Another good one in the San Juans would be to link up US Grant, Pilot Knob, and Vermillion Peak. The ridge between Crestone Peak and Needle is great. You could add in Kit Carson and Challenger Point to make it a very long day. Sawtooth Ridge is pretty good, as is the Ellingwood Ridge on La Plata. Traversing over the Three Apostles in the Sawatch is interesting.

WURL sounds interesting.

Agree with ElD/Wilson, particularly starting on the N Buttress and descending MW with snow. Not sure I'd recommend tacking on Gladstone - a lot of death blocks via that ridge.

I've linked V2, US Grant, V4 and S Lookout as well as Pilot Knob, GoldenH, Vermillion, Fuller, Beatty, and V8. I thought they were so-so scrambles punctuated by a couple fun moves that would have been much better with snow. Dry, there's a lot of junk and scree. V2 to Pilot has a couple interesting looking choss towers.

Crestones are good for setting, but it involves a lot of bypassing, as does Ellingwood. In the Crestone area, Music/Tijeras/Milwaukee/Aislado is a better linkup.

I've been wanting to link Challenger/KC/Obstruction and loop around N to Adams and the UNs. Might be fun.

I'd like to climb W. Ridge Conness then descend via N. Ridge and then on to NE Ridge North Peak. I've always thought climbing N.Ridge then dropping down to the start of West Ridge to start it seemed too contrived. Lots of good rock on that route.

Sawtooths was described to me as "scary" by a friend who travels such terrain often and doesn't use the word frequently.

Desolation Traverse (Maggie's > Pyramid) in Tahoe is fun but not in the same class as the High Sierra ones already suggested.

Linking up all the Echo Peaks>Echo Ridge>Cockscomb>Unicorn is surprisingly good, imho. Connect it with Matthes or Cathedral or both, etc. Tressiders are also worthy.

There's some exciting link-ups being done in Zion. San Rafael Swell too.

I vaguely remember Kearsarge Pinnacles being fun.

Full Palisade? Not T-Bolt -> Sill; not Temple -> Sill (this looks killer); but the full f'n Monty of Bishop Pass to Southfork Pass.

Better have loose-block-whispering and route-finding skills intact, sounds like.

First winter ascent a few years back I think?

Edit:
Quick search here on MP comes up with this posting, which got zero replies back in 2012: mountainproject.com/v/full-…

Seems like MP community isn't too pumped about monster ridgeline traverse.

How many ascents does the Full Palisade have at this point? And how many 'integral' ascents - alpine style no caching?

I'm interested in ridge traverses, damnit.

Stevee B wrote:I'd like to climb W. Ridge Conness then descend via N. Ridge and then on to NE Ridge North Peak. I've always thought climbing N.Ridge then dropping down to the start of West Ridge to start it seemed too contrived.

So then how about down-climb the West ridge (or most of it) -- after doing North Peak and the North ridge of Conness. Then up-climb the W ridge.

Thanks to Fossana's suggestion here, I finally tried the North Peak ridge traverse (N to S) last week, and I liked it a lot. Late arrival and wrong route to the start (taking the hikers trail up to the ridge proved unhelpful) - so didn't have time to continue on to Mt Conness this time.

I noticed that the North Peak ridge has lots of class 2 -- which I enjoyed, hopping from rock to rock. And sufficient fun class 3 with hands on the rock.
Not much class 5. Not much class 4.

So doing the traverse in direction S to N (W ridge -> N ridge Conness -> North Peak), has the following disadvantages:

• North Peak as anti-climax in climbing difficulty after doing Mt Conness.
• much more scrambling on N ridge of North Peak than on S ridge, so the majority is taken in the downhill direction.
• N ridge of Conness is taken in the overall downhill direction.
• there is a peaklet _between_ Conness N ridge and North Peak which has about 800 feet of scrambling, including at least two fun class 5 moves better than anything on North Peak -- but those moves would be downward if taken in S-to-N direction.

I thought down-climbing most of the West ridge was kind of fun.

I agree that scrambling from the Mt Conness summit down around to the base of the W ridge (after finishing the N ridge) is not so fun. But I have also done the link-up that way -- and the "bad memories" of the down-scramble faded quickly during the fun of climbing up on the W ridge -- as a suitably climactic finish.

Of course what some smart people do is to just not bother with including the West ridge, and feel that they got plenty of climbing by doing North Peak to N ridge Conness (especially if include scrambling over the peaklet in between). I think that yields a total length of about 7000 feet of scrambling/climbing.

Ken

Great post Ken, appreciate it. I did recall that the south ridge of North Peak is a bit of a rubble yawner, good point. I mostly had the idea as the last time I was on it, we saw a woman downclimbing the North Ridge after ascending the West Ridge. She said it was great and I thought, "that's the way to do it!"- but maybe not.

Was the Minaret Traverse mentioned? Not that it should be. Heard that rock may be worse than the Sawtooths.

Sirius wrote:Edit: Quick search here on MP comes up with this posting, which got zero replies back in 2012: mountainproject.com/v/full-… Seems like MP community isn't too pumped about monster ridgeline traverse.

Supertopo seems to get more comments on the big traverses, but they also do a periodic email blast with selected trip reports highlighted.

Stevee B wrote:we saw a woman downclimbing the North Ridge after ascending the West Ridge. She said it was great

And getting across the second (higher) mini-peak of the North ridge, the required crux moves are a bit easier and more fun in the S->N direction.

But I'll guess she was not continuing north scrambling over the peaklet and scrambling over North Peak.

Also there are two ways to climb up the North ridge of Conness. I think most parties (especially first time), are focused mainly on getting through the rappels / down-climbs off the second sub-peak -- and do lots of easier class 3 for the rest - (the faster way for the upper half is off the crest to the west side). And so miss out on most of the "position" + exposure + interesing moves that make the N ridge such a great climb.

The other way is to seek to maximize fun class 5 climbing moves and maximize percentage of moves exactly on the crest of the ridge (or hanging over its east side?).

I will guess that someone down-climbing the N ridge of Conness will tend to chose the first way. While I much prefer the second, which I think is more fun in the N->S direction (and arguably the required crux moves off the higher mini-peak are more interesting to work out).
. (It's also entertaining to work out the exposed moves directly off the S side of the lower mini-peak).

W ridge ...

Anyway accessing the bottom of the West ridge of Conness is a lot of work no matter how you do it - (I heard one guy likes to start by hiking/running a long loop around the north and west sides of North Peak). You can "get it over with" at the beginning, or instead choose to do it as a "break" in the middle.

The disadvantage of hiking/scrambling around to the base of the West ridge is that once you start you're pychologically "committed" -- because if you change your mind halfway down then you wasted the time+effort hiking that far -- and if hike/scramble all the way to the bottom, then the crux moves of the W ridge are in the first low section.

Nice thing about down-climbing the West ridge is that I can easily decide to stop whenever I want, with no commitment and no "wasted" time+effort. Because I enjoy already the down-climbing on the fun (mostly soune) rock of the West ridge. And then I enjoy even more however much up-climbing I do to get back to the top.
. (and if I'm not sure I'm feeling like trying the crux moves near the bottom, I just don't).

Also it's memorable to pass a roped party on the W ridge -- twice.

Ken

Stevee B wrote:Was the Minaret Traverse mentioned?

Yes, and I met a couple of guys on Cardinal Pinnacle who were planning to do it this month.
For me the big deterrent for trying some subsection of the Minaret traverse is that it seems like such a long approach. But maybe I'm just not accustomed to driving down to Reds Meadow.

Another one where the approach is a deterrent is the Sill - Palisades traverse. At least for that one there is Fossana's idea (and example) of starting with Temple and Gayley. Except that I'm not strong or fast enough for that.

Dark Star on Temple Crag: Looked to me like lots of downs + ups in its upper half.
Should it be added to the list of Best Alpine Traverses?

There are 2 traverses missing for Colorado:

- Notch Mountain & Halo Ridge near Mount of Holy Cross
- Circular ridge traverse of Columbia and Harvard

I finally got on the Cirque of the Towers traverse yesterday. I only did 8 of 11 peaks C2C before I ran out of light and bailed. The technical part (peaks 1-5) is one of the best traverses I've done in terms of stellar rock quality and heady exposure. The E Ridge of Wolf's Head alone is worth doing. Here are a few pics: