Pete and I again teamed up to attempt some of Jefferson County’s peaks. Our first objective was Sheeprock were we danced across an ice slick log then got plenty lost on the approach hike.
We found some minor technical terrain on our approach to Sheeprock’s south side and ended up breaking out the climbing shoes a little earlier than we had anticipated.
Finally, we found ourselves looking at Sheeprock’s summit from the west. We thought about climbing a bolted sport route on this side of the peak, but since it was barely in the sun we decided to keep warm on the south side route.
We scrambled up to some trees on low angled slabs, then cached our packs and hiked up a little further to begin the climb. In the photo below, our route went directly up from the trees to the blocks near the top.
This first pitch was all slab climbing on really sticky granite. It wasn’t very hard (a few 5.5 moves maybe) but there was little protection, a couple nuts low down then an old bolt that didn’t look very trustworthy.
Pete had to simul-climb about 10 feet up into a pocket so I could reach the large blocks and build an anchor. Then he quickly ran up to the belay.
From here I traversed east on the easy but exposed slopes at the base of the large blocks. I placed a few pieces of pro then reached an easy ramp where I belayed Pete over. We scrambled up the ramp then onto some broken ground back on the south side of the summit. From there it was easy slabs to the summit.
The summit was far windier than the base of the route, and we’d both been freezing while lightly clad at some of the belays. We wanted to rush back down to the warmth and so motivated Pete belayed be down the easy slabs to a rappel anchor on the west side of the summit. I was about 10 feet above the next anchors when I reached the ends of the ropes. Damn. Thankfully, we were rappelling down a bolted sport route, so there was a single solid bolt at my feet. Anchoring to that while cursing the fact that I didn’t pack a second 60 meter rope I yelled up to Pete to come down.
With both of us anchored to the single bolt we re-threaded the rope through the locking carabiner I’d have to leave on the route. Then I went down the remaining 10 feet to the real pair of anchors. Here we regrouped and felt some comfort being attached to two bolts again, but still freezing and hoping to get down shortly. With our luck holding my rope made it to the ground from this set of anchors and we coiled the rope and hiked back to our packs.
A little worn out we decided to forgo some of the other ranked and un-ranked peaks in the vicinity. Instead we hiked out and drove to the base of another peak – Cheesman Mountain.
It was a hot and sunny hike up the 700 feet to Cheesman’s “near top”. The actual summit of the peak is a wild boulder that required some technical climbing with ground fall potential.
The other way most people summit this peak is to toss a rope over the block and anchor the other side. Then you ascend the rope with prussiks or the like. The boulder was taller than I had anticipated and I was fearful of getting my brand new climbing rope stuck. Still I took a few feeble attempts to launch the end of the cord over the summit with a rock, but failed to clear the top.
Giving up, we decided to return on a future date with a lighter rope to toss over first and then pull a static line up.
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