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The Tower | 2010-08-21
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The dip in the profile is wrong. My GPS went wild.
Since I failed to summit The Tower in 2008, I strongly wanted to come back because I felt I gave up too easily the last time.
I parked my #88 Dale Earnhardt Jr. super car at Engadine Lodge. The Rummel Lake trailhead starts right across the highway from the Engadine Lodge access road. Following the trail for 5.3 km, we arrived Rummel Lake. We kept going on the trail, soon after the lake we were above treeline and a beautiful valley welcomed only me and not Ali. There was no cairn or any other mark to indicate where to start ascending to The Tower, so my suggestion is when you see the 3rd lake, you should look up and find a line to start scrambling (Rummel being the 1st and the 2nd lake might be dried out). One thing about this peak. No matter how you look at it or from where you look, from the bottom of the mountain, SW peak looks much higher. Or in that matter the top of SE ridge looks higher than the true peak. So don’t get fooled like I was the last time (page 4).
We stayed close to Kane’s line except to make scramble more joyful, we stayed on right on the edge of SE ridge. Don’t stay on the ridge too long though. About 30 m in elevation to the end of the ridge, leave the ridge and traverse to the left (west). While traversing, aim a weakness on an approaching rockband (page 13).
This is my opinion; more direct route to the summit might be the line where scree and slab meets. You can see it easily from the bottom of the mountain (page 4).
After summiting The Tower, we decided to keep continue on the ridge to SW peak. The ridge started out ok, but soon it became very very loose and slabby downhills with exposer. Then we hit a block which required 5th class. Right after the block there was the black rockband we could see from the bottom of the mountain. The rockband pretty much kicked my butt… So we gave up.
Note!! I think they have made a new trail which starts from waypoint “Bridge”. The old trail goes to the right. New trail goes to the left. Use the new trail because old trail faint in middle of bush.
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