Trip Report
Check out Videos at the bottom
Grays and Torreys would be another set of "repeats" for me. I had
done them both back in 2002
and again back in 2003.
In 2003 I had done them by the Kelso Ridge. But, the Kelso Ridge
was super cool, and it was a CLASSIC according to Roach. So, I
could do it a third time, surely.
Scotty and I worked our way up the Steven's Gulch Road the previous
night. We didn't have any serious problems, but there were plenty
of vehicles parked at the 1/4 mile point in the road, including 4x4
vehicles. We camped just outside our car at the trailhead parking
lot.
We got up early, and were started up the trail at around 5 am. I
should mention at this point that this climb was going to be a
"freebie" for me. See
my La Plata Trip Report from 2007 for the definition of a "freebie."
We started off pretty fast, but you could tell that 5 days of hiking
fourteeners was starting to take its toll. As we reached the turn
off for the Kelso saddle, Scotty admitted that he wasn't feeling too
hot. He said that he felt like he was having some issues with
AMS; being
light headed and a bit dizzy at times. So, Scotty decided to
continue up the main route, instead of risking the ridge route. I
continued up the ridge route. If I were going to do this for
third time, it was going to be a CLASSIC. :)
I hit the Kelso saddle about an hour after leaving the trailhead.
I was feeling pretty strong and immediately tackled the class 2 and
class 3 stuff. At the beginning of the ridge route it is mostly
class 2. But, within a few hundred feet of elevation, the route
starts to challenge you with some wicked class 3. Since I had
video taped the crux on the Sawtooth the day before, I was determined
to do the same thing today. Well, that
made things a bit more challenging. Negotiating these crux moves
with only one hand was going to be tough. In some cases, it just
"wasn't going to happen..." :)
For the next 500 or so feet, I was challenged by several - probably 3
or 4 - crux sections of solid class 3. This was a rude start to
the ridge route. After that though, it tapered off to some steep,
loose up-climbing. This loose stuff was easier, but truely
exhausting.
As I got about 200 feet from the top, I knew that my last two cruxes
were coming up. There was a class 4 crux first, then the knife
edge. I approached the class 4, and remembered it well. It
can be climbed multiple ways, but all direct methods require some
climbing
skills. You can negotiate around it, but that wouldn't be as much
fun. My method for this was to take the dihedral straight
on. About half way up the dihedral, I traversed the slab to the
right along some pretty solid foot holds. The traverse led me
right up on to the top of the crux. No problem. No problem
one handed. :)
After that I worked my way up over the top, and to the knife
edge. Doing the knife edge with one hand was just spooky.
But, I managed it, and found myself at the bottom of the white rock
tower. From there it was just a mild class 2 scramble to the top
where Scotty was waiting for me. I made the summit of Torreys in
1 hour 48 minutes from the saddle.
We spent almost no time on Torreys since Scotty had already been up
there 15 minutes waiting for me. We booked it towards
Grays. I was on auto pilot, and didn't stop until we hit the
summit of Grays. Scotty told me later that I was "killing him
with speed" up
the slopes of Grays. We made Grays in 32 minutes.
We spent 10 minutes on Grays, then headed down. It was a
beautiful day. We spent time on the way down talking with people
coming up. With our early start we were the first on both
peaks. So we passed plenty of people on the descent. We got
down in just under 1.5 hours.
As we were coming down, one of the guys that we chatted with had a the
same model and make vehicle that we did. We mentioned that we saw
it in the parking lot the night before. They had packed in, and
camped in the
basin. He asked if we had looked at the driver's side inside
tire. We said, "no." He told us how a porcipine had setup
camp under his car, chewing on unknown components. He tried to
scare it out, and when he did, it shot quills all over the place;
imbedding dozens in the tire.
When Scotty and I got back to the trailhead we made sure to take
pictures and video of that one. :)
This was another great "repeat". In only wish that Scott had
gotten
a chance to experience the CLASSIC Kelso Ridge also.
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