Clean up on Aisle Eight

Peak Eight: North Slopes/Northeast Ridge from 11,400' in Vestal Basin

Approximately 8 miles and 4000 vertical feet from camp in lower meadow for the peak

Introduction

Most of you probably have seen by now that newer LiDAR based surveys have been changing our beloved peak lists. North Maroon is ranked, Challenger Point is not. The Highest 100 had some shakeup as Trinity and Arrow replaced Dallas and Teakettle. Very few people have made it through this with their list completions intact. 13er finishers who climbed all of the soft ranked 13ers still have to go back for promoted 12ers. I was fortunate enough to have climbed all of the 12ers that got promoted, but along the journey I had missed several of the soft ranked 13ers that have now been bumped up to ranked peaks. So far this summer I have been fortunate enough to have managed to pick up some clean up peaks, and even refinish a few county and Wilderness peak lists.

My friend Lindsay is working on her Centennial list and we had been talking for months about heading into Vestal Basin together to get Vestal, Arrow and the Trinities. Her friend Kendall joined up for the trip to round out a solid group of three. If there was time, I was hoping to make the trek out to Peak Eight and clean up one of my LiDAR orphans, as a back up I would skip the Trinities repeat head for Eight while they did those. We packed in on Saturday of the July 4 weekend, knowing that the weather wasn't great to start. Sunday ended up being a washout, it pretty much rained all morning, and aside from a few quick walks around the valley we spent a lot of time in our tents. Monday was a great day, we were able to ascend Wham Ridge on Vestal, and the weather held for us to also add Arrow on the way back to camp. Tuesday was our only remaining climbing day before a Wednesday pack out, so my plan B was put in motion and I would head over to Eight while Lindsay and Kendall went up the Trinities.

I won't go into the details of how to get to Vestal Basin, there is plenty of information on this approach. I will say that the approach is in pretty good shape this year so far, the Colorado Trail from Molas to the beaver ponds is strong and all of the old avalanche debris is cleared. As usual, there is plenty of deadfall to navigate on the Vestal Basin trail, but the trail is easy enough to follow and far better than other similar climbers' trails in the area. The climbing gear for Wham weighed us down a bit and the last mile to camp was slow, so it was a welcome relief to reach the 11,400' meadow below Wham to set up our basecamp for the next few days.

Approach from Vestal Basin

Tuesday we woke up early to beat out any potential afternoon rains, and headed up the climbers' trail out of camp towards the upper 11,700' meadow in the dark by our headlamps. The creek crossing was higher than it was last time I in the basin, but we managed it okay. We hugged the bottom edge of some willows and headed up through a more treed area to minimize the willows and picked up a second climbers' trail partway up the slope.

This got us up above treeline before it fizzled out in the wide flats between Vestal and West Trinity as the sun became bright enough for us to put the headlamps away. Our goal was the nearly 12,900 saddle towards the base of West Trinity's west ridge.

Around 12,600 the slope steepens to a loose talus/scree slope. Staying right initially in some bigger rocks was reasonably stable until we could intercept a use trail that cuts diagonally across the slope where it almost reaches the saddle before entering the scree gully. Here we parted ways after a snack, it was about 6.15 and the morning clouds were still lingering. Nothing looked too threatening, so we went forward hoping for the best.

From the saddle, I had to traverse below the Trinities and then some, almost all the way to Storm King. To reach this area, some people choose to follow a line noted on CalTopo as the Kodiak High Route. This route is not a trail, but rather a high traverse across the scree and talus below the Trinities. Having been to Balsam Lake in 2019 via this same saddle, I knew that there was as grassy game trail 600' below and instead dropped straight down the grass to pick up this trail. Stay left and you will find a couple of cairns marking this trail. It is not particularly strong, but does make progress quickly despite fading out a few time.

You lose a little more elevation and meet up with a trail that comes out of Balsam Lake at about 11,800'. There is a small creek drainage here that leads into a nice basin ringed by peaks Seven, Eight, Storm King and East Trinity. The trail starts good, but fades out.

The route is reasonably obvious through here as you stay on a slight rise that splits between two high tarns around 12,100. This rise helps keep you out of willows and wet marshy grass. At the east end of the southern of these tarns, cross the meadow and ascend an even more defined rise that is a mix of grass and slab as it curves towards 12,600' at the base of Peak Eight's north face.

Here the terrain begins to steepen and its a good place for a break in the rocks. While snacking I noticed Lindsay and Kendall on the summit of West Trinity. We had radios so we could communicate throughout the days and I radioed to say hello.

Peak Eight Climb

As Roach might say if he had Peak Eight in one of his books, the introduction is over. There are two ways to approach the upper ridge from this point. One is to traverse east to a northeast facing scree gully that splits Eight and its eastern false summit. Being July 5, I expected that way would have a fair amount of snow still so I went with the second option. The north face of Peak Eight is a series of steep grass and rock and with careful route finding you can find a way to zigzag to the base of the ridge on the highest of these ledges with no more than a few easy class 3 moves.

If you keep going up and left, you eventually pop out at the saddle between Eight and its eastern false summit, where I could see from above that indeed the gully was snow filled.

I stashed the poles here and engaged in the class 3 northeast ridge. The ridge starts out steep, but is not too exposed. I mostly stayed on the ridge crest, which was a lot of fun to climb.

The ridge levels off and it becomes clear that the summit is not where the topo map has it marked, but is rather towards the west end and looks much higher. This may be the difference in the map (13,228') and LiDAR (13,252') elevations that result in this peaks' promotion to ranked.

The exposure level increases here, but the scrambling is solid and remains class 3. It took about 5 minutes to get to the highest point and in that 5 minutes a cloud from the Leviathan Creek drainage to the south rose dramatically out of the valley and began to envelope me in an eerie fog.

I radioed my friends that I was on the summit as they were now progressing towards Trinty. The fog kept me from spending too much time on the summit, and I retraced the ridge in the fog.

Return to Camp

I descended the steeper lower ridge back to the grassy ledge system and down to the basin below where I worked my way back towards the slopes below the Trinities. Here we radioed each other again to check weather as the south gully between Middle and East was my friends' bail point if needed. They felt good and were going for East, so I kept going to re-find the climbers' trail and head back to the West Trinity saddle, which required roughly 1100' of total regain along the way, the last 600' of which are the steepest.

Another radio check-in with my team when I reached the saddle and they were on East Trinity, I decided to traverse high below West Trinty's north face to hopefully meet them at the tarn below the Trinities. I generally stayed between 12,200 and 12,300 as I navigated numerous slabs and grass ramps. They arrived at the lake shortly after I did and we hiked back to camp together, getting hit with some rain on our way and some larger storms later at camp. One last evening in camp and we packed out the next morning where we reached the car about 10 minutes before the first rains of the day. A successful trip and all of us managed to reach our peak goals despite not being an ideal weather weekend. Already looking forward to the next one, with plans for Jagged and Peak Ten in about 2 weeks!