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Trip Report    

Basic Alpine Climb - Lundin Peak/West Ridge

Nice Alpine Climb with a variety of options.

  • Road suitable for all vehicles

Cave Ridge approach is gained by finding a faint path just past the waterfall, following that to valley and continuing to the east ridge coming of Snoqualmie. We gained that ridge by going up a shallow gully near the right terminus of the ridge.  Follow ridge up to within 300 to 400ft of the snow dome.  It's all white talus there, so you will know.  We had only about 500ft of visibility for the approach, so there was a bit of mystery involved.
We took the exposed class 3-4 connecting ridge to the base of the climb.  It's solid but there are a few spots that could cause issues.  An alternative is to drop off the ridge to the right approx 200ft before the ridge narrows.  Traverse and scramble class 3 up to the climb base.  I honestly think the ridge is a better scramble.

Since this was a Mentored climb with a total of 5, we spent a bit more time on the route.  P1 is 30M to a flat notch and a gear anchor.  Or continue to trees.
P2 is a class 3 scramble traverse that stays on the north side and contours up.  We only travelled this for distance of a 100ft and opted to go straight up to the ridge.  We did pitch this out as class 4 dirty crap, but it got us to the ridge crest and in the sun.  Climbing, IMO, is much more interesting here with class 4 to low 5 gendarmes, blocks etc.  The final 200 horizontal feet to the summit was on the south side ledges.  These are very exposed and were protected by a fixed line.
The summit was fixed as well.
We reversed our route along the ridge to an established rap station in a small notch.  One short rap gets you on exposed scramble terrain.  This is a no fall zone, but could easily be protected with a fixed line all the way to the top of P1.
We built an anchor hear and did a double rope rap all the way to the talus basin and walked out.

This climb has many options to ascend and descend.