Mammoth 2024
Mammoth Trip, 2024
September 12
Conness East Ridge
10 km and 550 m elevation gain in 6:40 hours.
Another installment of our Conness project. We took a short walk around town yesterday, but did little else on our rest day after Crystal. We hoped to have the energy for a good attempt today. But we didn't get a very early start, and while we thought we had a generous turn-around time, the day goes away fast.
We summitted Mt Conness in 2012, reaching the plateau beneath the summit block by way of "the Notch" atop a chute over a cirque.
Bill showed us the top end of a climber's descent route near the summit block, which set off some question. This route descended steeply down into a huge bowl.
In 2016, we climbed the East Ridge until we were stopped by a huge chasm that interrupts the ridge, but turned around and descended to a shoulder overlooking that huge bowl. Bill hypothesised we could contour around the steep sandy slopes over to where it meets the descent route I mentioned above, and this could be an alternative route to reaching the summit block from Saddlebag Lake.
In 2022, we made an attempt at the plateau via the Alpine Lake side of the East Ridge, and indeed arrived inside the bowl - but were called back by our turn-around time before we could reach the class 3 route to the plateau. From inside the bowl, we found a large cairn marking the top of the Climber's Descent Route from the bowl down to the trail to Saddlebag. It looked scary and not doable to us. We returned the way we came. Today, we went to look at the bottom of the Descent Route to see if it was viable for us.
The answer is No. Probably. We hiked from Saddlebag to the bottom of this route, and walked, scrambled, to the bottom of the class 3 section which presented itself as a sort of boulder problem. I could see the beta for this initial sequence. So could Bill, and he climbed it -this opening sequence- and decided this was way too much. His hiking boots offered litle hold on the slippery rock. He downclimbed with me spotting him, but I would not have been much help had he slipped. I decided not to even bother to try it, because I didn't feel like it today, and because what for? If one of us isn't comfortable climbing on, the group won't continue either. While Bill told me later that a dirt trail continues on the other side of this problem, we have to assume that most of this route is this type of class 3. -F.