Basic Alpine Climb - Guye Peak/West Face

This was a mentored lead for Han Yan, who did all the organization and communication.  In this instance, that was unusually complex because weather forced cancellation of original objective The Tooth.  Han had to poll students and leaders to see who was available what day and which peaks were open to club climbs on that date.  We finally settled on Guye Pk June 29.

Han's planning and coordination through all of this were exemplary, as was his steady handling of the climb itself.  IMO, Han Yan is ready for the leaders list.  I hope he applies.

Here is Han's report:

I have been avoid Guye peak after heard so many stories happened there.  However, our original scheduled Tooth climb got weathered out and we could not find another day work for us.  Most of days already have another official club climb on Tooth.  After 20-30 email exchange on reschedule attempts, we finally settled on Guye.

 This is my first mentored lead.  Cebe is kind enough to agree mentor me on this climb.  Grace is another experience climber although she is as smart as me to avoid Guye peak in her climbing years.  We have one basic graduate and two first-year basic students on the climb.

 We meet at the Alpental parking lot at 6:45 am.  After brief introduction, I shuttled the whole team to the trailhead (which has picnic table and fire rings), then drive out and parked my car in a gravel pullout along Alpental road.  Walk back to TH took me 5 minutes.

 Left trailhead at 7:30 am.  I like to hop on the rocks but apparently we went too high and missed the entrance on the left to the rocky stream bed.  After a little bit bushwhacking, we back on track.  Ascend the bed and reached the first steep section.  Looks there is some way to scramble up directly but we opt to go right and around it through trees.  

 After that, we should probably go left back to the bed and continue up.  However, we thought that is the end of bed and moved right through some exposed terrain to a grassy ramp.  The weather is not clear at this time and the visibility is poor so we are not very sure where we were.  Cebe went explore climber’s right to see if it is the correct route.  After some hard exposed scramble we agree that is not correct.  We went to left together and back to stream bed.  The second steep section is great for practice chimney moves.

 From the top of the second steep section, we turn right for the grassy ramp described in Mountaineers route description.  The waypoint is N47° 26.552' W121° 24.650', Elevation 4553 ft. The ramp has some loose rocks so we moved together to the base of first rock pitch.

I lead the first pitch and went up and left as far as I can.  Anchored on a tree and bring second up. From here, we unrope and continue go up and left.  Other teams just short rope and moved together.  We do not go up the route in the club description on the right, instead, went all the way up left to a tree and a crack which took a #4 cam for protection for the first and crux move.  Traverse on the face through rocks and trees all the way to the right. Built an anchor in the middle to protect second on the long traverse.

 Out route end at south of south summit, instead of middle of south and middle peak in the route descriptions.  Whole team summited around 2:30 pm.  

 For descent, follow the climber’s trail on the right from south summit to middle summit.  There is a tree on the top of gully between south and middle summit.   Do not rappel from here.  Continue up scramble around middle peak and go to gully between middle and north summit.  There is a tree with rappel anchors.  There is another tree a little bit lower have rappel anchors too but it is not very easy to access.  We did a double rope rappel from the tree above, then scrambled up to the notch on the north side of north peak.  I imagine if you only have a single rope, you can rappel and traverse a little bit higher to the same place too.

 The descent from now is a well-defined scramble trail back to Alpental parking lot.  We reached parking lot around 6 pm.

It turns out to a pleasant climb with a little bit everything.  Team is strong and move efficiently on all terrains.  We also add a little bit route finding in the climb, it is Guye peak anyway…  Cebe is still a legend and oversee the whole climb, learned a lot on how to make decisions when in doubt, thank you very much!