Placeholder Routes & Places

Trip Report    

North Twin Sister/West Ridge

Perfect time for this trip! We took bikes up to log/cairn and walked from there. Used gaiters, ax but no rope. Scrambled up the rock ridge, trying to follow cairns on right side, not crossing over until the false summit. Got to TH at 9am, started hiking at 11:30. Did not glissade the whole way down due to fog at the summit. Back after 7pm. I found biking the gravel road difficult without a mountain bike.

Route finding was the most difficult part. Just a tip that we followed a series of cairns most of the way up the West ridge. They were very helpful and will keep you entirely on the right side of the ridge and lower on the right side than you might think is best. But they largely prevent you from getting into overly serious 5th class terrain. However not far from the top (500-600’? or lower), they disappear. So at this point, we headed up to the ridge itself and followed the top of the ridge towards to the summit, in the fog…. On the way down, we kickstepped down the snow facing in for at least the first 100-200’ because of the fog. Also turns out there’s a rock under the snow that’s beginning to melt out 50-75’ from the summit ridge that’s hard to see until you’re right on it. We started glissading around 200’ down and had a great ride. Then, we traversed to another snow chute on skier’s left, which we glissaded part-way down and then traversed still further left until we were back on the West ridge just about where the snow started above the tree line.