Trip Report
Intermediate Alpine Climb - Mount Thompson/West Ridge
The end of the rain streak unhappily coincided with the climbing portion of our trip.
Tom Girard
- Fri, Aug 11, 2017 — Sat, Aug 12, 2017
- Intermediate Alpine Climb - Mount Thompson/West Ridge
- Mount Thompson/West Ridge
- Climbing
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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Route in excellent shape. Some loose holds on the ascent, teams following should wait until the next team is above. Descent rather unpleasant scree.
We left the trailhead around 4:15 Friday afternoon and reached our camp above Gravel Lake around 7:45pm. Water readily available from Ridge Lake.
We left camp at 5:30am. In the basin below Thomson we left some extra gear near a small stream (not sure how much longer the water will be running). At the base of the climb by 7:30am.
Pitch 1 is 30 meters to a bushy tree, not 60 meters. Pitch 2 zigzags quite a bit, I used doubles and had to stop about 45 meters due to rope drag. Pitch 3 was 15 more meters of climbing, then 45 meters of slab. Pitch 4 was about 15 meters more of the slab, then straight up to the false summit. Going slight right was a little easier on this pitch. From the false summit coil ropes, and downclimb to the bottom of the true summit. 5th pitch starts by going left, then up a gully.
A thunderstorm and rain/wind added to our adventure from pitch 3 to the summit. Cleared up on the way down.
The two rappels are easy enough to find, first one is about 15 meters long, while the second is 20-25. I wouldn't recommend doing a double rope rappel due to all the loose rock. From there we mostly followed the bootpath all the way into the basin. Packed up camp and back at the cars around 7pm.