Ingalls Peak (7662')

South Face - Aug 5 '99

Ingalls Peak (not yet)

Party: Mountaineers - Leader: Craig Brown , Rope Leaders: Mike ? and I. Basic Students: Ron Williams, Patrick ?, and Rob ?.

Route: South Face

Weather: Good weather, mostly sunny with high cloud cover... pending thunderstorms for the afternoon, which we narrowly avoided.

Thoughts

Given that this is my second time climbing Ingalls, I dont have much to say. See Ingalls 98 for pictures and the general feel of the climb. The only significant difference between the first trip and this one is that I was a rope lead for this climb. The climb went very well. The team was fast and efficient (for a basic climb). We completed the climb from car to car in 10.5 hours. One hour was wasted on the approach when we chose a higher traverse route. We ended up heading up the East ridge of South Ingalls peak. To get back into the gulley between the North and South peaks, some of us down climbed and others chose another path down that required a rappel. Another hour was spent on the descent when I stopped for a short dip in the creek in the meadows... it was REALLY cold, so I found a shallow still-water puddle that was a little more temperature friendly.

Technical Details

For leading this climb, a small rack is all that is required. I recommend a few cams up to a number 1 camalot (specifically, I used my Metolius 4-cam #'s 3,4 and 5 and maybe the #2, 3-cam), a set of stoppers, and a couple medium hexes (numbers 5 and 6). The hexes are useful in a couple cracks that dont take cams as well. The leader, Craig, impressed me by leading the entire climb with Tri-Cams. When looking at the placement potential, I would agree that the cracks on Ingalls are very conducive to tri-cam placements. If you are comfortable with tri-cams, I'd probably replace the hexes with a couple number 1-2.5 tri-cams.

I brought and used 6 single slings/draws. Bring a couple more or less depending on your feel for run-out.

As for the climb, it is easily done in two pitches. We scrambled up the back side of the dog-tooth crags, dropped the packs near a large boulder (at the top of a rappel station used to descend to the east side of the crags). From the packs you scramble up another 20 feet to a ledge where we rope up. From here two options are open. The wide crack on the left (which I have never done) and the smaller hand crack up the middle. If you start on the left, it makes most sense to climb to the top of the second pitch, where a healthy ledge and rappel station are located. Form the right crack, you can climb either to the first belay/rappel station to the right, or you could continue up to the second belay station. Between the top of the first pitch and the second Belay station is the crux move of the climb. The crack and jumble of rock thin down to a narrow finger crack. It is a single balancy move to move up, trusting your single hand placement, wishing you had thinner fingers.Some claim that this is a 5.6 move, though most of the route is 5.4 or lower. From the top of either the first or second pitch, the end of the climb can be reached with a 50m rope over easy ground. In other words, you can do this either as a single pitch followed by a double pitch, or vice versa.

Rappelling the route has the same various possibilities. We used a double rap from the top down to the top of the first pitch, and a single rap from there to the starting ledge, downclimbed to the packs and then a double rap from the packs to the east side of the dog-tooth crags. A 60 meter rope would get you from the top of the first pitch right down to the packs.

Yeah, yeah... too much information.

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Last updated: Aug 25, 1999