Mixup Peak, East Face


July 24, 2005

Paul Belitz, Phil Fortier

Since I couldn't convince anybody to go skiing, I joined Phil on a moderate alpine scramble up Mixup Peak, via the East Face. We quickly hiked up to Cascade Pass and continued along Mixup Arm, where dirt gullies were made easy to cross by the presence of good steps, presumably created by the hordes on the Ptarmigan Traverse. We met a goat at the edge of the Cache Glacier, but he wasn't particularly aggressive, so we continued. The pseudo-glacier was flat and soft, so I didn't need to experimentally determine how well duct tape would hold my step-in crampons to my sneakers.


Phil close to the pass.



Johannesburg. Whoa.



Goat.



Phil, with Sahale in the background. Skiing anyone?



Up the Cache Glacier. Gunsight Notch is out of view on the right.


The moat was deep. I scrambled into it, and climbed some very lose and nasty 4th class dirt to Gunsight Notch (the left-most of the two notches). Phil greatly enjoyed the dirt climbing, and soon joined me at the notch.


Dude, that moat is no joke.


We scrambled across the steep heather to the base of the rock. Having brought only my 30 meter glacier rope, we simulclimbed some 4th class to the large level section that Beckey talks about. From there, gradually steepening steps of rocks (peculiar geologic phenomenon, by the way) brought us to the last little bit of steep rock. I offered the lead to Phil at this point, and he led up the steep fourth class rock with agility and temerity.


Formidable living up to its name.



Phil on the staircase. The steepest bit is visible.



Spider. It looks good, Phil. Phil?



Our second rap, down to the wrong notch.


After a nice summit break, we decided to return to the comforts of civilization, and decided to rappel on what by now seemed a comically short rope. After some short-rope shenanigans, we scrambled down the endless staircase back to the original section of 4th class. Several shots of GU fortified our party for this bodacious challenge, and we downsoloed to a well marked rap anchor. A short rap brought us back to the wrong Gunsight Notch. We traversed to the right Gunsight Notch, down the dirt gully, down the glacier (narrowly avoiding insanity induced by the lack of skis), and down the endless switchbacks to the car.


Not a bad moat.


Thanks for the fun little daytrip, Phil!

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