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Mount Baldy West Ridge | 2011-06-18
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This was our backup plan. Didn’t know how the weather would play out. So we decided to go for Mount Baldy via West Ridge which was shorter and easier to escape if weather becomes an issue. I don’t know and I didn’t ask if Barbara had this in her mind for a while or TR from Vern a week ago inspired her.
I wasn’t excepting to have a good trail here even though this is covered in Nugara’s scramble book, but I was wrong. Yes there was a good trail most of the time. There is more than enough space to park my car at the drainage we used for ascent (page 2). We followed the creek until it became more like little canyon. According to Parry there is a nice challenging scrambling if you stay on the creek, but since it was still wet, we left the creek and walked toward left (north). Once above treeline and hit rocks, it was scrambling time. All the way up to almost near west peak, hands on scrambling continued on slabby rocks. Page 9 is a good demonstration of typical slab scrambling here. The crux was ok for me. Technically this crux was barely climber’s scramble compared with some other climber’s in my opinion. Nonetheless it is narrow, little bit slabby (no surprise), and exposed so nothing to take it lightly. After the crux there was one more slab to go over then the summit is within few minutes from there.
From the west peak we decided to go to the south peak as well. For me the crux was actually the downclimbing from the west peak to west/south col. It looks quite hard but when you take wrong routes which easily can be accomplished like me (;^ω^A the downclimb can be very hard. So make sure to look for the easiest way out. Oh well since when I stay on route anyway…
We took a scree from west/south col for descent. There is a well established trail there to the road.
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