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Basic Alpine Climb - Ingalls Peak/South Ridge

Very efficient smooth climbing trip with perfect weather and some beautiful Fall colors.

Miho Urabe Miho Urabe
September 29, 2018
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • Route condition was perfect. We hiked on trail to Ingalls Lake. It was an obvious trail, and hard to miss. From the lake to the base of the climb, we scrambled up on slab area left side of gulley. It was easy to go up, too. The end of the scramble, we had to go through a talus area but easy to navigate and did not see any hazards. No snow on our approach.

There were 6 people, 3 rope teams in a group. We met at 6:40 am at TH, and left TH at 7:00 am. We planned to stop by Ingalls Lake to fill water on the way to base of the climbing.

IngallsLaks.jpgIngalls Lake

We arrived at Ingalls Lake at 9:30 am. We took some snack break and filtered water.

We left Ingalls Lake at 10:15 am and scrambled through the slab area that was left side of gully. We could see the dog tooth most of the time, and it was easy to go through sab area. We saw some cairns there, too.

DogTooth.jpgDog Tooth

We arrived Dog Tooth/Base of climbing route at 11:00 am.

LookUpFromBase.jpg

Looking up from the base of the climb

We started climbing at 11:30.

Pitch 1: We belayed at the very base of the climb. There are 2 ledges on this pitch, and when we got to the first ledge, we were already running out of the rope. So, we set up the anchor on the first ledge. This was an easy climb. We followed the crack on left and then huge crack on right.

Pitch 1’: This pitch was supposed to be the part of the Pitch 1 we planned. It was a short climb. There were two cracks. Either should work. We climbed up to the next ledge with several large and loose boulders. We anchored into a huge rock with many slings wrapped around it.

2.jpg4 climbers on Pitch 2

Pitch 2: We climbed on the crack on the far left. And then move to the middle crack, good protection. Climbed up to two big bolts and belayed from there. Those bolts were used for rappelling later. This space is small and good for 2 people.

Pitch 3: From a little bit of left side of the belay anchor climbed straight up to the big ledge above. From there we climbed the left corner and climbed the nice short dihedral. Beta mentioned there were bolts but I did not find them. Built a gear anchor and belayed from there.

Scramble to summit:

Untied a rope and scrambled up to the summit. First rope team reached at the summit at 12:45 pm. The 3rd team arrived at the summit at 1:30 pm.

Summit.jpgHappy summit

Descent:

We left summit at 2:00 pm.

Scrambled down to the first rappel station that is located right side of the end of the technical climbing.

Rappel 1 – This is a famous sit & spin rappel. Rappelled down to the bolted belay anchor at the end of the pitch 2. 60 m rope.

Rappel 2 – 60 m double rope rappelled to the ledge where we finished (ran out the rope length) our 1st pitch. We passed the ledge with several huge and loose boulders.

Rappel 3 – 60 m rope. Used the webbing around a huge rock and rappelled down to the talus below. We had to scramble down about 10 feet to get to our base.

Everyone back to the base of the climb at 3:00 pm.

We had some break and left the base of climb at 3:20 pm. This time we did not go down to the lake. We scrambled through slab area (traversing toward south + slightly going down). Shortly we found a climber’s trail and followed it to the Headlight Basin. We arrived at Headlight Basin at 4:40 pm.

HeadlightViewBasin.jpgHeadlight basin

The little pond was dried out, but we still could see the small fall (top part). We hiked on the trail all the way to the trail head. We arrived at the trail head at 6:00 pm.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Rope: 60 m

Gear: single rack up to 2 inches, nuts, runners (double, single) – used 3 pieces of gear per pitch as average.