Seven Fingered Jack 08/18/2011

I met up with Joe Ferguson who I got a ride with. We were surprised that no one else rode with us. We made good time and when got to the turn off of highway 2 there were no hotels so we just whet no a forest service campsite which was nice. It cost $17 and was by a lake or river, which had no bugs but there was a noise that was coming from a fish ladder which I thought was maybe a bear.

When we got to the trailhead we were the first ones there. We met up with Paul and Eric and Brian , two people canceled to it was just us. The hike up to the trail to Seven Fingered Jack was steep but not as steep as Putvin trail on Mt. Stone. It was about three and a half miles to the camp.

There were all types of wildflowers about. When we got to camp and I set up camp by the river. But the other campers were more inland. The next day we went to climb Mt. Fernow.

The hike up to the saddle was fine but then the exploratory aspect came in. Bob Breivogel said it took like thirteen hours. Anyhow we got to the saddle and they're was a way down but it was too steep. So we went around the moraine and they came up the other side.

We went up some steep terrain but it was getting late. We would have bivy and we had no bivy gear so we went back to camp. It was a good practice day. I had a good time climbing down at a 25 degree slope of snow.

When we got back camp the deers were out enjoying the camp, there were like three of them. The next day we got up early and went to climb Seven Fingered Jack

There were at least two routes that we saw, we decided to take the ice gully up which was more direct the going all the way around on the rocks The ice gully was by far the most challenging thing I've climbed. It was straight up and I had to put my crampons almost perpendicular to the gully and then put my spike of my ice ax like 2-3 inches into the ice. I was slow but I just wanted get up and not look down.

Here it is from above. When we got the top of the ice gully we took a break, but I knew that we would make to the top as that was probably the crux of the climb. We went through rocks the rest of the way up, there were a couple large rock that fell but no one was hurt

We made the summit and came down a different way. There was a little rock climbing on the way down. There was some down climbing on snow, but I choose to take the rocks down instead of using the French Tenquice. We had to step up a fixed line as we traversed across a steep icy slope.