The Pickets

Miles and I just spent four days in the Southern Pickets. Here's the breakdown by day.

Day 1
Do the 500o something foot approach via Goodell creek in nine hours and pass out.

Miles on the approach
We went up W. McMillan on the first day and then up the left side of Inspiration and down the right on our second day.

Day 2

Climb the West Ridge of West McMillan Spire. The climbing wasn't technical, but it was still fun to spend some time in crampons and climb up some steep snow. After a short nap on the summit we made it back to camp by mid-day and spent the rest of the day lounging around camp on the rocks.

Miles enjoying the snow on W. McMillan
Getting to the top of the snow section
Scrambling to the summit

Lounging around camp

Day 3

Climb the West Ridge of Inspiration Peak and descend down the East Ridge. The climb up the W. Ridge went off without a hitch, but the descent down the E. Ridge was much more of an ordeal than we anticipated. Our climbing Bible said that we should descend down the E. Ridge and I assumed that there would be rap anchors all over the place, but that wasn't the case. We ended up having to leave stuff for four anchors and doing a bunch of sketchy down climbing to get to the glacier. All in all it took us 14.5 hours to do the climb, despite the fact that we reached the summit in only 5 hours.

The Terror glacier
Gaining the gully on Inspiration
Part way up inspiration with Terror glacier in the background
Traversing across the summit ridge
Down climbing the East Ridge
Making the final rappel onto the glacier
Looking back up what we rappelled and downclimbed

Day 4

Hike out in significantly less time than it took to go in.

As always check out Miles website for some of his pics.

Back to Washington

A lot has happened since my last post. I'll try to keep it short and let the pictures do the talking. First we left Joe's Valley to go climb in the La Sal mountains of Utah. We climbed there for a day before moving on to Moab. Once in Moab we climbed the North Face of Castleton Tower 5.11a. After Castleton we went to a local swimming hole and did some cliff jumping and slacklining over the water. From here we decided to head back to Washington to see friends and family and do some climbing around home. This involved a stop by Arches National Park and then 28hrs. straight of driving with a stop in Yellowstone to see the Geyser go off. Now that I'm back in Washington I spent a day aid soloing City Park in Index and just got back from four days in the Picket Range with Miles, that will be in the next post.

The first pitch on the North Face of Castleton

The route goes up the crack in the middle of the face

Josh slacklining over the water. He and Miles made it half way, I took two steps and jumped off (super scary)
Delicate Arch
Sunset in Arches National Park
The Tetons
Old Faithful in Yellowstone
City Park
Looking down City Park