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I was planning to rest the labor day weekend after the spectacular but laborious
Ptarmigan Traverse the week before, but Aidan invited me to go climbing with him
and Colin. So, I naturally couldn't turn that down. After various
suggestions, we finally settled on the north face Vesper Peak. We left
from my house at five in the morning and had a strangely hard time of finding
the correct turns to make. We were at the trailhead soon enough though and
were underway. Colin set quite the aerobic pace and we made great time up the
trail, though Aidan and I were breathing really hard. We took our first
break in the talus beneath Headlee Pass.
There's a great trail the whole way and Headlee Pass is actually off to the right in the valley, not at the head of it. The steep switchbacks led us to the pass where we had our first views of the golden slopes of Vesper, though the slabs of the north face were out of view. We played around up here for a while on various ridges and then headed out. We traversed over to another basin below Vesper with a small alpine lake in it that still contained large chunks of ice in the water. Off to the left up more talus led to the notch were we would descend to start the north face climb. The notch is to the left of an unnamed point between Vesper and Sperry.
We stashed our trekking poles at this small pass and then scrambled down to the base of the snow where we put on our crampons and got out our ice axes. The snow is actually pretty steep here and there are indeed crevasses but the snow featured sun-molded cups that made for easy walking. Once on the other side, all we had to do was find a place to exit the glacier on to the north face (Colin was turned around at this point for that very reason a couple of years earlier). After shunning a very thin snow bridge, we opted for a very reasonable step over the moat to a small ledge on the face. Then we had to downclimb in to the moat and back up on to the face where we put up our crampons and got ready for the rock climbing part.
The climbing at the base of the snow near the gullies is low 5th class, mostly 4th class I guess. We started out on a small buttress and ended up in one of the gullies though I think it would have been better to stay on the buttress the entire way since the upper portion of the gullies is a bit loose. On exiting the gully, we were on grassy, blocky, 3rd class terrain. We followed this for about a hundred or more feet to the base of the giant slabs of the north face.
We couldn't decide who would lead. "I don't care." "Do you want to?" and so on. Eventually, Colin headed out. We were simul-climbing the route so it was almost as if we were all leading it anyway. The first part of the slabs was the most challenging, I thought. There was one fairly steep section with small holds...maybe a short 5.7 move. The rest was delightful and sustained 5.0-5.4 climbing up to the dihedral the marked the final pitch to the summit. We had spotted another group from before we had even crossed the snow who were on the north face and we'd caught up to them by now. Aidan wanted to lead the last pitch but wanted to wait until the others finished their climb. Spurred on by Colin and I, he headed up and quickly made his way up the dihedral, which is indeed mostly 4th class and low 5th class. It was much fun. At the top of the slabs, we were but a short stroll to the true summit where we hung out for a while and enjoyed the views. The other party we'd seen in the parking lot who also wanted to do the north face showed up on top but had gotten turned around somehow and ended up on the standard route. All in all, there were probably about 4 other parties. We beat it down the trail and were indeed back in time to watch the Simpsons!
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