Kangaroo Temple/North Face

This climb took place on Saturday, July 12th.

Met at the hairpin turn @ 7:00 am. Arrived at Kangaroo Pass in just over an hour. There was soft, wet snow on the trail leading up to the pass. Crampons were not needed and the snow can easily be avoided. We brought ice axes and used them but could probably have left them in the car.

Only patches of snow from the pass to the base of the climb. The gully is entirely free of snow.

Encountered another team of three who were just roping up at base of the climb. The leaders were new to trad climbing but overall seemed to do well. We had a fairly long wait behind them, perhaps 1.5-2 hours.

Overall the climbing was uneventful and fun. The route is in great shape. The fixed pin at the top of the first pitch is loose and wiggles easily with fingers... not to be trusted. We had a last-minute cancellation and hence 5 climbers. We opted to have the second group climb using twin rope technique and belay up two followers. This worked very well.

I had watched a YouTube video of a prior Mountaineers group trip where they rigged a double rope rappel at the top of the climb. So we tried this. The long rappel was fun and got the group down quickly, however the ledge that would normally be the second rappel presented problems when trying to retrieve the rope. We opted not to pull hard on the rope lest we pull down a block from the notoriously loose rock. One of the intermediates led up on the unstuck portion of the rope perhaps 40-60 feet on easy 5th class, placing pro more generously than usual should they opt to down climb. They then traversed on the ledge and freed the stuck rope. As expected the rope had whipped around a loose block. With the rope retrieved the leader opted to down climb the easy rock rather than rig a rappel. This all went well however I would not recommend the double rope rappel from the summit as the presence of the ledge makes rope retrieval problematic.

The return was uneventful. We encountered the requisite goat at Kangaroo Pass. It was aggressive only in it's search for it's objective...

The other party plus the struck rope cost us a lot of time. RT = 12 hours.