"South Face Prusik Peak, Enchantments"


More to come. Unfortunately, not including the climb - I was too intimidated by the route to lug the Nikon up!

And rightly so - the last 3 pitches of the South Face live up to the route's strenuous reputation! Kevin Kuo and I ended up bypassing the crux 5.9 offwidth chimney on the 5th pitch. He stopped, and let me take an easy but fun and strenuous 5.8 hand crack on the left, up to an ugly gear-pull over a 5.11-ish bulge on an old piton, then following two shiny new bolts across a blank face to the regular route ramp to the belay for pitch 6.

On pitch 6, I "pitched" off twice because I couldn't get my head around the bit of squeeze chimney 30 feet up, so I let Kevin finish the pitch - hangdogging it all the way, but pulling all the moves! I followed, weighting the rope slightly just once. At least I could feel good about that.

Meanwhile, Russ and Doinita romped up the West Ridge (why didn't we think of that?). They waited until Doinita leaned over and called to us as we were starting pitch 6, then wisely took off - it was over two hours before we finally made the summit!

The other highlight of the trip: anywhere from 2-5 goats on our camp peninsula at Leprechaun Lake most of the time we were there.

More photos to come...

22 sunset perfection lake  

27 prusik south face goats   28 prusik south face  

30 upper snow lake