Sherpa Peak

We left our house around 7am and drove the four hours to Esmerelda TH where we met our friends around 11am. It was a busy day with lots of cars. At the trailhead we did a quick discussion on the rock gear we thought that we should bring deciding to bring a single rack and one 60 meter rope for the four of us. We planned to either belay each person up in the middle of the rope or just set a fixed line for folks to get on while we made the more exposed moves.

We left the trailhead and hiked on the great trail up to Longs Pass – passing a few other hikers on the way. We took a short sit down break at Longs Pass and ate a snack after about 1.5 hours of hiking.

We hit a little bit of snow on the north side of the pass but nothing major and found the trail down to Ingalls Creek. Turned east we headed down the valley and passed the Cascadian Couloir turn off making sure to stay right and not start heading up that trail. We passed a bunch of tents as we walked down the trail.

At a spot with a little campsite on the North side of the trail we found the approach trail and turned north making our way up the sometimes faint and sometimes obvious trail. Eventually the trail became pretty easy to follow to the crossing of the drainage right below 6000 feet. We ran into another group of 4 folks here who were planning on going up Sherpa the next day too!

Once we crossed the drainage we slogged up some sandy rocky slopes and then dropped a few feet down off the other side of the ridge to the creek below.

We followed this creek up to about 6400 feet and found two tent spots to setup camp for the night. We hung out, made dinner and chatted and made a plan to wake up at 4 and leave at 5 in the morning to go for the summit.

We woke up at 4am and started moving around 5am. Right from camp we curved around the left side of the waterfall slabs that were above our campsite finding a grassy ramp that led us up to the upper basin. We stayed more on the west side of the basin on the sandy scree and talus until we go to snow. Once we hit the snow we passed by the other folks campsite that we saw yesterday. They had found a huge granite slab to bivy on the night before and it looked like a great spot.

We walked on the snow for a second, but then opted to go back onto the talus as the snow was a bit firm. As we neared the ridge line we could hear the other group of 4 above us just starting the first pitch. We hit a short and firm snow patch right before the ridge and opted to put on micro spikes and get out our ice axes for security. We climbed up the snow, but then stepped off the rock to the left before the steepest part and scrambled up easy slab to the ridge line.

At the ridge line we put our harnesses, helmets and rock shoes on and opted to scramble as far as we could. We could see the other group of 4 a bit up the route and figured we might catch up to them. We scrambled what felt like class 4 up to a rap station that we think was the top of Pitch 2. There was a bit of an exposed move up to this station, but all the holds were good. Here we chatted with the last member of the team ahead of us as we got the rope out. Jeff led the finger crack straight up and it took gear well and then into a left facing corner, eventually reaching it’s top and dropping over to the South side of the ridge, building a belay and then fixing a line for the two middle folks to come up and then belayed Carolyn up.

Then, we scrambled the easy south side of the ridge to the start of the crux pitch on a sandy-ish ledge on the south side of the ridge line. Jeff led the ‘bear hug’ pitch placing a #1 (or maybe #2…) in the right side of the block before making a move up and then a step out right to a great foot ledge. We brought the #3 cam, but could have left it at home as there were other placements that worked for all different sizes. He led the pitch all the way to the ridge line passing one rap station on the way and ending at a block with a bunch of slings and some rap rings right at a ‘hole’ in the ridge line. The rest of the team came up.

Carolyn then led the slabs to the Sherpa Peak summit. We all joined her on the top and soaked up the views on the stellar sunny day. We summited right around 9am and high fived the other party of 4. The other party started the descent and we hung out on the summit for pictures and ate a snack. We opted not climb the Balance Rock, but entertained it for a moment.

For the descent, we set a line back to the station right at the ridge line to bring everyone over. Then, we did one rappel to the station that Jeff had passed just above the bear hug pitch. From here, we did one more rappel back to the sandy-ish ledge at the base of the crux pitch. Then, we scrambled the ridge, reversing our route, to a rap station that was on a ledge above the notch we belayed at at the top of finger crack pitch. We noticed a different rap station that was skiers left from the top of that pitch a bit lower down and debated whether or not we should go down there for a bit.

We decided to rap from the station we were at and ended up having to do another intermediate rappel to get to the start of where we roped up. We think we should have scrambled all the way back down to the first belay station and climbed up to that other rap station for a smoother descent, but so it goes. We did two more rappels back to our gear and sat in the sun for a moment and ate snack.

Then, we descended the same route we came up, with some glissading lower down and landed back at camp around 1pm. We left camp around 1:45 and made it back to the car around 5pm. Great time on the way back and awesome day out with friends!