Hall Peak 5485 ft (Attempt)

February 11, 2001

Here are some pictures of a recent attempt on Hall Peak via the West Ridge. I first saw Hall Peak on a trip to the Big Four Ice Caves in 1999. My eye is always on the lookout for climbing possibilities, and while I was very impressed (scared) with the north face of Big Four, it was the forested slopes leading to the well-formed point of the adjacent Hall Peak that lured my attention. I took a photo of the north east face of Hall Peak to be studied later. I obtained topos, read and re-read Beckey's description, trying to gleen any information as to understated difficulties, but whenever a climbing day came up, my partners and I would find a better known peak (read: greater chance of a summit) to climb. So, this weekend I finally had my opportunity to set foot on the peak.

Jake, Chris, and I drove to the Silverton trailhead around 7am and after a few minutes spent searching we located the trail and started hiking. There was several inches of snow on the ground but not enough to warrant snowshoes yet. The well defined trail soon crossed a creek and we ended up following it for a while until Jake spotted the real trail a little ways off to the right. We had to cross two chutes where slide alders had taken over. After a few slaps in the face by errant branches snapping back, I was wide awake. It wasn't long until we were traversing the north side of Silver Gulch. Having left the forest, we were rewarded with a nice view down the valley. We were fortunate that the recent snowfalls had covered most of the slide alder and devils club that thoroughly guard this approach in the summer. A few of the devil's club were still poking through and Jake couldn't resist grabbing onto one for old times sake.

The other side of the valley had much steeper walls with several partially frozen waterfalls running down the sides. In colder conditions they may have lured us away from our intended route, but the noisy, gurgling sound of water flowing under them persuaded us to keep going. As we gained ground we could see the Skubai Ridge climbing to the summit with the massive northwest face below.

Up until this point the south side of the valley has been all steep, rocky walls, but now it gave way to a gully ascending to the southeast. This seemed to fit the Beckey description which only stated the obvious, "ascend SE to the ridge on the west side of Hall, keeping well right of the NW face." I wasn't certain that this was the route, so Chris started climbing up, warily observing the avalanche debris on one side. The walls on either side of the gully had already slid, leaving dark rock with small patches of snow. We weren't so worried about anything coming down on us from the cliffs above, but rather the wind packed snow below us. Chris said that he could see that it continued for some distance so we all headed up, cautiously spaced apart. We did our best to stick to the sides but several times we were forced to cross the middle of the gully with it's deep pockets of loaded, windpacked snow. When we weren't able to stay to the sides, we found ridges that offered better protection.

Even with all our cautious traveling, I caused a small slab to release about 4 inches while traversing a slope with slide alders. I had been using "veggie belays" whenever possible, so I was well anchored when it released. Jake was following a few yards behind me, so he waited a safe distance back while I hacked at the slab with my axe to coax it to continue sliding out of his path. Jake was able to make the traverse with little problem, but having seen the slide confirmed our suspicions of the conditions. When we caught up with Chris, he was at the top of a slope, near the side of the gully. We could see that our route had to cross the middle again, and this slope looked especially loaded so we broke out the rope and put on our harnesses and crampons. For an anchor we buried a picket as deep as possible and for greater security we kicked out a pit to belay from. We tied into the rope and belayed each other across without incident. One more belay allowed us to reach a safe area in a pit at the base of a rock wall near the top of the gully. We could see that although the gully continued up, it narrowed considerably making it a serious terrain trap if the slope above released. So we made the decision to cross to the other side of the gully and ascend a steep snow slope leading to a ridge. Another series of belays and we were at a clump of trees, finally safe from the loaded slopes of the gully. From the trees is looked like the ridge would continue up to the west ridge.

Chris led out from our stand of trees and was quickly out of sight as he crested a knoll. After a few minutes the rope stopped and he called down that he was anchored and that Jake could follow. Soon Jake was out of sight also and I could hear their voices, laughing. From below I couldn't see much and I was anxious to get up to them and learn what the excitement was. I yelled up and asked what they had found. The reply was a chuckle from Jake saying, "Come on up, you're gonna love this". I started up and soon saw for myself that the ridge narrowed to about six feet with the left side dropping off 1000 feet to the floor of the cirque at the bottom of the northwest face. The right side was a snowy drop off to the gully we came up. Our ridge continued to narrow into an exposed, corniced ridge for about 30 feet. It quickly became apparent that this was going to be our highpoint for the day.

This wasn't the summit but it was an impressive place to be. To my left were branches of a good sized tree that seemed to be growing straight up, hundreds of feet from the basin floor. I could touch the branches, but I couldn't reach the trunk because the snow leading to it was really just a false covering over lower branches. The ridge was so steep that I couldn't look over it to see where the tree was growing from. I could look down between the branches and see nothing but empty space.

More to come.....