Search trip reports
IMG_5342.JPG

Trip Report    

Basic Rock Climb - Kangaroo Temple/North Face

The climbing was fun and easy; the approach was made difficult because the snow has melted revealing giant talus fields.

Lauren Allen Lauren Allen
June 18, 2019
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • Approach

    The snow is mostly melted and the spots that remain are mostly soft and thin.

    There is a river crossing on the way up, be careful to stay on the trail.

    After the pond lake before the steep ascent we walked too far and climbed talus. On the descent we found the correct trail which starts around 100 ft before the pond. Below is a picture of the pond after we had already walked too far around it (sorry, I can't figure out how to rotate the image)

    IMG_5319.JPG

    The scramble up to the climbing route was very steep and it would be easy to hurt someone with a kicked rock (luckily, the team was safe :)

    IMG_5321.JPG

    Climbing Route

    p1- Rope drag was present, but not unmanageble and I was able to get to the second rappel station to belay. I was happy to see the piton that meant I was almost there.

    p2- short and simple traverse

    p3- the blind corner was not scary at all. I wish I had placed a longer sling on my first piece so that I wouldn't have had so much rope drag

    IMG_5324.JPG

     

    Scramble to the summit- this was easy up sandy benches

    Descent

    The rappel station was on the north side and had a cairn to the left of it. Getting down to it was tricky. I set up a handline (see picture) but an easier descent may have been facing the rap station to down climb immediately on the right side.

    IMG_5344.JPG

    The first rappel involves a sit and spin. It is good to warn students about this in advance.

    The second rappel goes climber's left of the rap station, towards the arete (this is the intermediate station you pass when climbing p1). I went straight down and had to horizontally traverse. Avoid doing this!

    Third rap gets you to the bottom.

    The scramble down involved a bit of steep snow and it may have been good to take out helmets and ice axes (but we did not).

    We lost the trail a bit on the way back to the cars but did not stray to far thanks to the group's awesome navigators :)

     

     

We had a team of 6 fantastic climbers that climbed in teams of 2 each.

We camped at Lone Fir Campground, a lovely and convenient spot. I hear it is difficult to secure sites on weekends so I was grateful to our buddy who came out Thursday night and snagged two sites.

We started at 6:15 AM from the hairpin turn to avoid sharing the route and the forecasted thunderstorms. Both other climbers and thunder arrived later that day so I was glad we started early.

Round drip was about 11 hours. Our times were as such:

6:15 AM Begin approach

9:30 AM Start Climb

11:15 AM first group ends climb, 12:15 PM everyone at summit

Back at cars around 5 PM

We saw and heard some whistling marmots who were very cute!