The sky looked perfectly clear at 4:30 when Teresa stuck her head out of the tent. So I was soon up and brewing coffee and eating breakfast. The caffeine took a while to kick in after this many early starts and mentally taxing days. I fell in behind the others, walking without a headlamp since mine was signaling low batteries.
As we moved higher in the basin nearer Twin Peaks and the snow got steeper my normal pace came back and I rushed upwards to some convenient stopping rocks. Jim’s tracks from yesterday were still visible, especially in the more shaded portion of the gully. His deep steps proved a real help in the hard snow (again, I was half wishing for steel crampons instead of the aluminum ones I’d brought).
Since I wasn’t carrying the picket or the extra ice tool, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do to help the others if they found this section difficult. So I continued up onto the rocks nearer the saddle between the two Twin Peaks.
I poked my head over the saddle and was immediately hit by a strong west wind. This climb was going to get much colder in a bit. I started throwing on extra layers while waiting for the others. We also had a possible plan to traverse west and reach Split Mountain, but with the clouds and winds that was looking like less of a possibility.
Once gathered up we headed to the east summit which proved to be mostly class 2 scrambling. A few rocks were slick and we needed to be careful but that was the main danger.
One little snow patch contained a hidden danger when we realized that the right portion was an unsupported cornice that would have dropped us out of sight very quickly. I think Sarah nearly jumped backwards about 10 feet when she realized the situation.
The main attraction of this summit was the original 1930 summit register (information we’d gotten from Jim). Left by many Colorado climbers 79 years ago it was no where close to being filled up.
We radioed Jim and saw him standing atop The Sphinx. We agreed to be cautious today and just get the West of the two Twin Peaks and leave Split Mountain for a future trip.
The scrambling to the west summit was much more fun, class 3 and 4 moves with a little thinking all the way to the top.
Using a simple sight level we couldn’t detect much difference between the two summits elevation, so we were happy to have reached both in case later surveys determine that the west summit is actually higher.
After returning to the saddle we setup a doubled rope rappel to get around most of the steep snow which hadn’t softened too much yet.
After that it was just a short walk back to camp where we found Jim already waiting.
Wind River 2009 posts:
Approach
Turret Peak
Bonney Pass
Sphinx and Woodrow Wilson
Twin Peaks
Departure
It is cool to see that the 1930 summit register is still there.
I climbed both peaks in Aug 1976 and we thought that register was old then.