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On awaking, we packed up, had a little breakfast, and headed deeper into the Cascades
- always a great
feeling! We strolled an easy path to talus that led to the Middle Cascade
Glacier and the indeed formidable north face of Mount Formidable. After a look at
the broken glacier hanging on the face, our ideas to climb the easier south side
were cemented. The traverse and climb up the glacier were straightforward
and pleasant - we didn't have to deal with too many crevasses and certainly the
heavily broken part of the glacier is easily avoided. We were heading for
the Spider-Formidable col which would lead us down and around to the back side
of Formidable and eventually to Yang Yang Lakes which would be camp 2.
There are two cols at the top of the glacier and we couldn't recall which was the correct one. The right looked more prominent but there were scary cliffs under it on the other side. The left one, the much more narrow one, is the correct one. From here, the LeConte Glacier is perfectly framed in an awesome display of rugged nature. And we'd be heading in to that terrain on the third day.
Coming out of the col, we had to descend 45 degree snow. The snow, as I recall, was quite solid (a pleasant surprise) and the descent was easy. We then traversed right along snow and talus to the base of a prominent saddle. Along the trail, below the saddle, is a campsite. I pulled all of the stuff out of my pack and threw everything but the essentials of a climb of Formidable in my pack. Michael gave me his stuff as well. I carried the *stuff* and Michael carried the rope. We set out for our climb of Formidable. Most of the approach to Formidable is over a lot of talus and scree. We had to traverse under the peak for a long way before we started heading up, further than feels natural, but the summit is indeed actually pretty far to the west.
It's hard to tell where the summit is even from the saddle. We mistook the summit to the east of the true summit as the peak that we were heading for. Formidable is a pretty complex mountain. Anyway, we traversed a couple of snowfields and headed for a ridge further to the west. We heard voices and spotted another party apparently heading down. As we got closer, we realized they were trying a different route, moving from the west back to the east. We were within echo shot of them and communication was hard, but they were indeed trying a different route. Once we got up on the ridge on 3rd class scrambling, we realized we were in the right place and we hollered at them to follow. The ridge featured some prominently smooth, flat slabs and this would be our landmark on the way down. Easy 2nd class terrain got us to the base of the high snowfield and we put on crampons and headed up. At the top, we left crampons and began the long, loose scramble to the top.
We scrambled up 3rd class terrain and slabs to a prominent gully. We recognized this as the one that Peggy Goldman and her husband had mentioned to us - it had a cairn on both sides of it. So, we crossed the 4th class but pleasantly solid terrain to the other side. From here, it got loose again. I headed up a wide gully on a right hand, slightly more solid, rib and Michael stuck to the talus and scree. We noticed two points that looked like summits. The left looked higher, but the right point was the one we saw from the saddle, which looked higher from that point. I spotted a cairn leading to the right, so we went that way. Fun scrambling got us to the top, but not the summit! (I hope that someone has destroyed that cairn...we didn't have the option to.)
The true summit was indeed the west one. I followed the ridge, a solid sidewalk in the sky, to the true summit, hoping for a direct route. There wasn't one and we had to rappel back down. From here, we scrambled the remaining bit to the top. On top, we saw the other party (BTW, this was Steve and Julianne, whom we met later on the trip) appear on the false summit as well. The views were just as good from over there and they were content to stay at that point.
We had a long way back, across a lot of loose slopes, talus, and scree. We made a single rappel on some of the steeper terrain. Climbing back up to the saddle was a big hassle (very loose), so we jumped over to some grassier and more stable ground. Back at the packs, we reloaded and headed down to Yang Yang Lakes. The hike into the lakes is beautiful, the backdrop being the LeConte Glacier and surrounding peaks.
We arrived at camp with plenty of daylight to relax and unwind. We spent some time following the trail beyond the lakes to see exactly how we were going to get through the cliffs below LeConte Peak. The trail dog-legged backwards in a talus field and we saw how that would work. I wanted to swim, however, it was a bit too late and, being a lake situated on the east, was already out of direct sunlight. Michael kindly shared a smashed turkey sandwiched that he'd forgotten about and we had our real dinner about an hour later. Michael turned in early and I strolled around a bit and found a nice vantage spot where I could casually view the LeConte Glacier. |
