West Ridge  5.7

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Type:  Trad, Alpine, 5 pitches, Grade III Consensus:  5.7 [details] FA:  ??? Season:  summer Submitted By:  Taylor-B. on Sep 16, 2010 You & This Route  |  Other Opinions (1) Your todo list: Your stars: Your rating: -none- [change] Your ticklist: [add new tick]

BETA PHOTO: The west ridge is the right hand skyline.

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Description 

Uber good route with a wilderness feeling and great position. Huck it past Spearheard and ascend the gully between Pagoda and Chiefs Head. This gully can have snow, ice, and rock fall in it year round(axe & pons??), we avoided this by scrambling rock on the left.

Once at the saddle, the climbing begins. We gained the ridge on the south side which I thought was the 5.7 crux. Once on the ridge, the climbing is straightforward and trends on the south side of the ridge with a few gendarmes to ascend and down climb.

Descend down the northeast ridge to the saddle between Pagoda and the Keyboards, then turn northwest down the scree and talus slope.

Protection 

Alpine rack with up to a #3 BD Camalot.

Photos of West Ridge Slideshow

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Splitter.	Pagoda Mountain from the summit of Spearhead.	BETA PHOTO: This is how we climbed it, although there are a nu...
Pagoda (and Long's) from the summit of Chiefshead.	Adam starts toward the W Ridge from Chiefshead.	Hand traverse made even more fun with gusty winds.
Will and Adam navigate the slabs on the W Ridge.	More cruiser terrain.	Passing one of the gendarmes.
Last slabby push to the summit.	Looking back at Chiefshead.	Adam takes a break before continuing on to Long's.