Basic Rock Climb - Ingalls Peak/South Ridge

Our group started hiking at 5:15am. We were happy to have a cool, shady approach up to Ingalls Pass. It took us a little over 2 hours to reach Headlight Basin where we stopped to filter/fill up water. Views were great here, but there were lots of mosquitoes. 

We departed the trail shortly before reaching Ingalls Lake. We scrambled over rock slabs above Ingalls Lake and into the gully leading up to the climb. There are a few snow patches remaining in the gully, but they can be avoided if desired. We did not bring ice axe or crampons and were happy with our choice.  We stayed on large, stable talus  on the climber's left side of the gully for most of the approach, then crossed a short section of loose scree to reach the base of the climb.

We dropped packs & poles at the base of the climb and scrambled up to nice ledges at the start of the crack systems on P1. We started climbing around 10am. The standard wide (#2-#3 size) vertical crack option for P1 is very slick! One of our rope teams took a variation starting slightly to the left which looked fun with an interesting step up over a little roof, it protected well & seemed similar in difficulty to the rest of the climb 5.5-ish. (This variation of P1 is pictured below.) We linked P1 & P2 which made for a long, nearly 60m pitch. A pair of climbers who had gotten an early start rappelled past us as we climbed P3 & P4. They were the only other people we saw on the route. We summited around noon. 

For the descent, we used two 70m ropes to do a double rope rappel from the top of P4 which got us about 1/2 way down P2. We were able to un-rope there and scramble to the anchor at the top of P1. From the top of P1, a 60m rope will get you back to the ledges where we started climbing and a few moves of 4th class down climbing get you back to the base of the climb. Some of our group members were not comfortable scrambling down from the ledges to the packs, so we fixed one end of the 60m rope at the P1 anchor and had folks do a single strand rappel on the full length of the 60m rope which was more than sufficient to reach the place where we dropped our packs.  Then, the last person who was comfortable with a bit of down scrambling did a standard double strand rappel on the 60m rope to the ledges, pulled the rope, and scrambled down to join the rest of the group. This was an extremely efficient way to rappel. We only had to do 2 rappels to get off of the route, and we never had to wait for a rope to come down from a previous rappel. Highly recommend bringing two 70m ropes & using them for  a double rope rappel off the top of P4. 

(There is a mountainproject comment about ropes getting stuck in a crack at the top of P4...Please do not let this scare you. I believe this would be a problem if you were setting up rappel directly on the bolts. However, when we climbed, there was tat with rap rings on the P4 anchor that extended below the "rope eating crack" mentioned in the mountainproject comments. We had no problems pulling our ropes using the existing tat & rap rings.)

We finished our rappels around 2pm. We made a quick stop at Ingalls Lake & a few brave souls jumped in the icy cold water! We had a pleasant hike out with abundant wildflowers & great views. We made it back to the cars around 5:30pm for a total time of 12.5 hours C2C.