Trip Report
Yellowjacket Tower/East Flank
A fun climb in a remote setting.
Sujay Kawale
- Sun, Sep 3, 2023
- Yellowjacket Tower/East Flank
- Climbing
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
the Approach
We started the approach hike at 7:15 am. The trail is steep and sandy, but easy to follow until you get to the base of the main gully. At this point, there are some fairly steep sections of Class III/IV scrambling and the potential for rockfall, so helmets are recommended from this point on.
This puts you into the main gully, which has a lot of loose rock. We tried to keep the team close together to mitigate rockfall hazards.
The best route up seemed to be along climber's left edge of the gully (we realized this on the way down). As you approach the upper section of the gully, the climb is to your right. There is a tree with a rappel anchor to help you identify where the climb begins, see photo below.
the climb
We arrived at the base of the climb at 9:45 am. With two leaders and four students, we roped up as two teams of three, with the middle climber tied in with a cow's tail. We did the climb in three pitches. The first pitch (described as 'Hidden Gully' in the SummitPost route description) ascends a left trending steep gully (easy 4th Class), and ends at a bolted anchor. Pitch 2 goes up the corner to climber's right and ends at a tree anchor just below a large roof / boulder.
From here, you can climb up over the boulder on the right side, to get to the large bench below the final pitch. The entire team arrived at the bench below the summit at 1:15 pm. Justin led the final pitch to the summit and set up a top rope belay for the rest of the team.
We then shared a giant 2lb slab of Rice Krispies which Justin had very graciously carried for the team.
The Descent
We set up a double length rappel from a tree anchor which brought us back near the base of the climb. From here, we set up another rappel which put us back into the gully. We skipped one anchor in the gully and chose to just downclimb the main gully. A final rappel anchor is available towards the end of the gully which we did set up, to get through the steepest section of the gully. We were back at the cars at 5:15 pm.