[Jake Robinson]

A few people have been pestering me to post this. I am hesitant, because if a tread were to form in the West Peak choss, it would really take away from the wilderness character of the place. These days you never know what's gonna be the next Mailbox. If that happens, my bad. But, you are welcome to tell me how awesome I am if you want. Trip Report I've wanted to try West Peak for a while now and Connor M and I finally made it happen this past weekend. We met up at the Dose trailhead after work on Friday night. It was overflowing with cars and I had to park a quarter mile down the road! I was also dismayed to learn that they bumped the closure another mile east since I was last here to climb Constance. Oh well, it's flat and we had bikes. We left the cars at 7PM and made camp just past Honeymoon Meadows at 11:30 PM.

Lake Constance route got a new sign

We left camp at 7AM the following morning and made our way up to the Anderson Glacier Moraine. It's pretty clear that the Anderson Glacier no longer exists...also, we had planned to take the Flypaper Pass route to the Eel Glacier, but it looked out. Very out. Instead we decided to gamble on the directions in the climbers guide and try route 2 for Mt. Anderson. This seemed to avoid the Flypaper Pass issue. Much thanks to mountainflamingo's report for providing us with some confidence that it would go. For once, the climbers guide was completely accurate and only sandbagged the route by one grade! (calls it class 2 but there is a class 3 gully in the middle). We saw JasonK806 on the summit, waved and he waved back, but never saw each other up close enough to have a conversation.

Anderson

Route 2 goes up these slopes (taken on descent)

Connor took off like a rocket and climbed the 2400' to the col just north of Anderson in 50 minutes. He practically runs up talus and scree. And he was carrying the rope! It took me around an hour and I was exhausted when I arrived. I told Connor I should set the pace for the rest of the day or else I would burn out. Without a doubt he is the strongest and fastest person I've ever hiked with - in all terrain - by far. He should run ultramarathons or something. From the col north of Anderson, we donned crampons and dropped to 6200' on the Eel Glacier, then crossed the glacier and climbed snow and choss to the 7100' notch where we got our first view of the intimidating West Peak.

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Route sketch from 7100' notch. I notice one possible error with my redline, on the traverse section. It might actually go slightly lower than I marked but I can't remember at this point.

I seem to have lost my appetite for difficult and chossy peaks this year, and I wondered how I'd feel up there. Turns out it wasn't as bad as either of us expected, but you still have to be really careful and check all of your holds - multiple times. We tagged the Triple Divide point and then traversed very loose class 4 benches on the north side of the "serrated" first part of the ridge, until we were able to climb up to a minor notch. This was perhaps the most insecure climbing of the day but the exposure isn't horrid - a fall would lead to a painful cheese-grating on scree, but you wouldn't go over a cliff or anything. Seems pretty much impossible to protect so very careful scrambling was the best option for us. From the col we climbed terribly loose class 3 to a minor highpoint, then made an exposed downclimb (class 3-4) to the deep notch below the false summit. Connor cruised through no problem. I took my time, but the exposure and loose rock was making me pretty nervous through here. The exposure is hundreds of feet off in either direction and the rock does not inspire confidence. I was about ready to ask for a rope, but luckily after this col the rock quality improves dramatically and the exposure lessens. Then it's hundreds of feet of really enjoyable scrambling with a few climbing moves thrown in. In no time we were on the false summit looking at the next problem. From the false summit we downclimbed ball-bearing strewn class 3 to the notch below the true summit. Here we stayed mostly on the crest, climbing through one low fifth class move. It's very exposed but the rock is solid and the holds are positive, so it actually felt easy. A few more loose class 3 moves and we were on the summit of West Peak! We signed the register placed by Dan and Curt last month but quickly retreated because the summit was swarming with flying ants. Just below the summit, we had noticed a gully on the north side of the ridge with rappel slings, so we decided to rap it. Our 30m rope was enough to get us to some very insecure-feeling ledges that led back to the true-false notch. This was really nasty stuff in here and truth be told, we both felt that rappelling this way was probably more dangerous than it would have been to just down-climb the low fifth section unroped. My advice to future climbers: Don't mess with this gully. Climb the low fifth way on the way up and then either rap back that way, or do a belayed downclimb, or just downclimb it. You could probably protect it if you wanted, the rock is pretty good.

Annotated view of the true summit from the false summit with both routes shown

Rap gully and traverse

After this it was just a matter of very carefully scrambling back to our gear cache at the 7100' notch. Overall the route on West Peak was shorter and a little easier than we expected. But, great care is needed for every single scrambling move, as the rock is not trustworthy, and the exposure is pretty significant for most of the route. Calling this class 3 though, as the climbers guide does, is pretty comical. Just another example of the sandbagging in that book. Darkly funny that it's published by Olympic Mountain Rescue...

scrambling back to our gear

From the notch, we dropped back to the Eel Glacier, then followed our tracks back up to Main Anderson. From the notch it was a few minutes of easy scrambling to the top. What a great summit! Expansive views in all directions. Probably my new favorite viewpoint in the Olympics. We soaked in the views for a while and then headed back to camp, arriving by 6:30 PM.

Connor enjoying Anderson summit

West Peak and Olympus

The following day the plan was to go for Elk Lick, but something about my backpack and new shirt combo was "rubbing me the wrong way." I decided to hike out early in the morning before the heat to avoid making things worse, while Connor soloed Elk Lick. Good thing too, because I was in a lot of pain on the way out. I'll spare you the details but it was a long, pathetic, painful slog out to the car. I must have been quite the comical sight to all of the campers on the Dose road...

[Silas]

Dude, swell stuff!

[Brian R]

One of the most elusive major summits in the Olympic Mountains. Congratulations! How did the Eel Glacier look if one were to come up from the Silt Creek/terminus area and ascend East Peak?

[Jake Robinson]

Thanks for the compliments guys! I can feel the dopamine rushing through my veins...

[Silas]

Pics are great good. Always thought Mathias looked tough. May be the crux of the 6500’ list. Not a lot of info though...

[Bluebird]

count me as genuinely grateful you did not die on this mtn. 👍🏻

[cascadetraverser]

Great trip Jake; looks chossy to me! Glad all went well...

[silence]

Yikes! What a climb. Nice work!

[Malachai Constant]

Most of the Olympics outside the Crescent Formation are choss piles. Glaciers are the only decent routes on them, that is why the loss of glaciers is such bad news aside from esthetics.

[IanB]

Excellent trip report! Convinced me completely that I will never attempt that summit.

[ozzy]

What an amazing trip!! I don't think you need to worry about the Facebook crowds up there man!! Looks like some gnarly yet inviting terrain up there on the west pk! Thanks for the informative tr as always man. Oh and it's still hard for me to fathom the fact that you were tryin to just keep up with Connor! He must be pretty crazy too! Cheers and keep up the kick ass year!

[Fletcher]

Good beta!

[bobbi]

congratulations! impressive! thanks for sharing!

[puzzlr]

Wow! Love the summit ridge photo with annotation.

[JasonK806]