Mt Ritter
20 Aug 2000 - by Dave Calvert
My son, Ryan, and I returned from our trip to Ritter
yesterday, the 19th, and it was the most awesome climb we've ever done. We
left Clover Meadow trailhead at 10 o'clock Wednesday morning the16th, and
made camp at Hemlock Crossing about 4pm. On Thursday the 17th, we hiked up
the north fork of the San Joaquin to just below Twin Island Lake. At this
point we left the main trail and headed up a beautiful waterfall that led to
a bench below the upper Ritter Lake, the one farthest south. Made camp at
about 3:30 in a howling wind that shot right up the canyon below.The view of
Ritter during sunset was spectacular. We were looking east directly at the
face which was framed by two peaks west of the Ritter Lakes. In 97' when we
attempted to climb Ritter, we were turned back because of snow and the
glaciers above the lakes. This year we took ice axes and crampons and were
prepared for the worst. Our climb started on the 18th at 7 o'clock. We
climbed a talus field that took us to a chute just below the upper lake. We
ran into a lot of snow but we were able to climb around it to the exit
stream that led to the lower lake which goes under the glacier. The lakes
had ice in them, but nothing like 97'. At this point we could see that there
was very little snow, and we would not need the ice axes or the crampons. We
started up the talus slope to the south and west,and it was really steep.
Most of the time it was hands on climbing.We kept the snow field that's in
the middle of the slope to our left and kept telling ourselves to stay right
(south) on the slope. We just couldn't do it. We saw Ritter right there up
this steep narrow chute to the left and of course we said we can climb that.
Wrong! At this point we cut across the slope on scree that was on top of
frozen scree.Really slippery. We got into the chute that's just south and
west of the summit which we could see above us. The climb at this point
became hands on all the time. We got about 200ft up in this chute and it
became apparent that we could'nt safely go any further. I got hit in the
chin and in the back by rocks that just randomly broke and fell and Ryan was
finding boulder size rocks that were loose and moving. We deciced at this
point to back down. We went on belay and backed out of this chute which took
about 2 hours. When we got back to the scree field we had lost about 3 hours
and all of our adrenaline. I don't mind saying and I think Ryan
agrees(although he'd never admit it), that we were both a " little nervous"
in that chute. We were pretty discouraged at this point and time was running
out, it was now 12:30, but we decided to go to the right side of the slope
and and "just see". We found a slab of granite that led up to a spring and
when we looked up we saw the route. We climbed straight up a steep, but
really nice talus field that led to the ridge to the south of Ritter. At the
top we went to far south and popped up on top of the glaciers in between
Ritter and the Minerets. We back tracked a short way and had to do some
hands on, but we knew we were going to make it. We climbed north and came
out on the ridge, and there was Ritter right in front of us to the north. We
were pumped. We followed the ridge above the snow field and got to the south
edge of the summit and found a "trail" that led west up to some cairns,( we
call them ducks). We followed them up to the summit of Mt Ritter. What a
feeling! It was 2:15 when we made the summit so we didn't stay long. The
wind was blowing sorta hard so it was really cold. We signed one of the
books and got a kick out of the old photos of the guys that climbed it in
the 40's, I think. We ate lunch did the photo thing and then headed
carefully back to camp. The round trip took 11 hours, but it was worth every
sore muscle we have.
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