Wolf's Head, West Ridge

By: Larry Sverdrup | Climbers: Larry Sverdrup, Todd Cantor |Trip Dates: July 23-24, 2000

Photo: Gary Clark

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My initial foray to the Wind Rivers was in September of 1999 with Mirian, my future wife. We flew to Salt Lake City and drove a front-wheel-drive passenger car to the trailhead. The previous week the weather in the Winds had been spectacular. The jet stream dropped south as we arrived, however. At the sign-in box, a Moose with her calf grazed nearby. When Mirian reached in to grab a pencil she pulled out a very large bullet and asked me what it was.

We hiked to Big Sandy Lake for a fairly level six miles and made camp as a thundershower moved in. The lightening and thunder persisted into the night. We awoke to 8 inches of snow, the trail barely discernable in places. Friends of mine had encountered similar fate in the "Winds". We hiked back out to the trailhead, running into a herd of deer at one point. The crux of the retreat lay ahead, however. The road had acquired incredibly deep mud in places. It would have been unthinkable to get in to the trailhead with our car in those conditions. Luckily, most of the worst mud lay on downhill sections on the way out. I just had to keep the car in the center of the road. On the last muddy uphill portion I got too close to a shallow ditch running along the left-hand side of the road and slid into it. I could not get out, despite the fact that the ditch barely qualified as a ditch, being perhaps less than 12" lower than the road. To give you a better idea of how bad it was, cylinders of mud the diameter of the tire stuck out from our wheels. Every Wyoming vehicle that passed by stopped to help us. Guys jumped right out into the mud with their polished cowboy boots to help us without even a thought for themselves. They pulled us back onto the road, and I threw one of the guys a twenty. Wyoming folks are the greatest. I swore to come back with a four-wheel drive vehicle the next time.

On July 22nd, I flew into Salt Lake City with Todd Cantor from San Diego. We rented a 4WD sport utility vehicle and headed for the Wind Rivers. A Teton guide once told me that the best climbing success in the nearby Tetons occurs during the last week of July to the first week of August, and I planned this trip accordingly. We arrived at the trailhead fairly late in the day but decided to hike into Big Sandy Lake anyway. There was substantial cloud activity, but no rain. We arrived at the lake after dark. It was so late I just wanted to hit the sack, but Todd wanted to fire up the stove to make a hot dinner. I asked him if he knew how to operate the stove and he said yes. Next thing I know, the stove is on fire. Todd pulls the gas bottle from the stove, and the gas bottle is on fire. How long before the fuel inside heated to the point that the bottle burst open from the pressure creating a huge fireball? Not only did the sign say that the fire danger was "high" today, our climbing success depended upon eating freeze-dried food, which required a functioning stove. Todd threw the flaming fuel bottle on the ground. I threw my climbing pack on top of it intending to smother the flames, but the flames just seemed to just leak around under the pack. I resisted the impulse to throw my body on top of the pack to insure a better seal. I withdrew the pack and grabbed a full water bottle and began drowning the flames in a torrent of water. One does not typically fight a gasoline fire with water. Miraculously the flames died down and went out. Todd ate cold food and we hit the hay.

The next morning after breakfast we hiked the three miles over Jackass Pass and down into Lonesome Lake basin. Once again there was substantial cloud activity, and at one point we donned our rain jackets as a momentary bit of gusty rain pelted us. By the time we set up camp, the weather seemed to stabilize with a lot of wind swept clouds, but no precipitation. Lonesome Lake basin was awash in myriad types of wild flowers. We felt pretty good despite the increase in altitude (Lonesome Lake is at 10,166 feet) and we were anxious to begin climbing. We decided to go for the East Ridge of Wolf's Head. We hiked over to the gully between Pingora and "Tiger Bump" where the 50-classics description says to start. The "green ledges" approach looked improbable from the ground. We later met a couple of British ladies who did it and said that it wasn't bad. They belayed it, and said that one couldn't see where one was going on the lower part. A couple of guys descending Pingora told us the time was 3:54 PM, and they seemed a little surprised to see us going for Wolf's Head so late in the day. As the sun went down, the cloud activity would decrease, and the chances of being caught on the ridge in a lightning storm would be very small.

We simul-climbed up the gully stemming against snow at one point. Reaching the summit of Tiger bump went uneventfully and we then encountered rappel anchors where the route description says to descend some tricky steps to the notch. The wind swept clouds made for a dramatic sky, in a very dramatic place. Todd insisted on down climbing this step rather than rappelling, and solving the puzzle made for some fun moves. Following him, I lowered myself a body length down to stand upon a narrow ledge, and then pinched a chicken head in order to reach down and grab the narrow ledge with my hands and complete the descent of the step. We scrambled from there to the notch. From above, the "green ledges" approach didn't look bad at all. Above us loomed the narrow ridge to Wolf's Head, looking somewhat like a gigantic potato chip sticking in the air.

Todd elected to take the first lead but paused when he realized what it was. A 30-degree slab, perhaps two feet wide, with lots of exposure on either side. Oh yeah, there was no pro for about thirty feet. Todd is not one to beg for pro anyway, and he scampered up the pitch, one hand grasping either edge of the slab. The next pitch was steeper but also one of the easiest - a 5.6 scamper up a knobby face with cracks. We were now on top of the ridge. We just had to run the ridge to the summit. It turns out that most of the fun climbing was yet to come.

The summit of Wolf's Head is 12,163 feet high, and just a day and a half ago we were living at sea level. We were climbing OK but we were definitely a little whacked by the altitude. Like a racecar negotiating pylons, we had to negotiate a succession of towers on the ridge, sometimes passing to the north, and sometimes to the south. On this climb, Todd ended up with all of the more exhilarating leads.

The first tower is passed on the south and then one must enter a squeeze chimney between the first and second towers. Without a pack this would be easy. For sake of time Todd and I kept our packs on. The squeeze chimney is passed easiest higher up where it is wider, and about this time we began to lose our sunlight. As I couldn't see the footholds very well, I was worried about slipping and falling into the chimney like a cork in a bottle. We popped out on a ledge to the north at the beginning of what turns out to be the crux pitch.

The second tower is known as Darth Vader due to its silhouette, so I like to call the pitch the "Darth Vader hand traverse". Todd led this pitch with some verbal returns in the crux area. As it was quite dark, one couldn't see anything unless the headlamp stared right at it. First there is a friction traverse with plenty of pro. Then you step out on this window sill (adequate pro) and finally drop hands down to what is left of the ledge and smear feet on the best available rugosities, clipping pitons as they appear. There is quite a drop below. Eventually a crack leads back towards the ridge crest.

Since Todd belayed well below the ridge crest and it was dark, I neglected to notice the "parallel scenic cracks" higher up. Instead I led out on another single crack lower down, hands in the crack, feet on rugosities. The crack led to a blank face and I was forced to retreat. But this brings up an interesting aspect of the climb and one reason why the East Ridge of Wolf's Head is such a great climb. There is always one route that goes, but it is never too easy. Todd led the parallel scenic cracks, the crux being the last moves. The lower crack turns into a ledge, which becomes quite wide, but the rock above overhangs, forcing one to friction on rugosities below and mantle back up. All of this is exposed to much air, of course.

The next difficulty was encountered traversing a tower to the south via a so-called "fortuitous horizontal crack". Once again, the feet fight for the best rugosities available as the hand traverse proceeds. At one point, Todd placed a camalot while heel hooking the horizontal crack. A mini crux is found getting from the end of the horizontal crack to the chimney. At some point the moon arose and we paused to gaze at it.

Finally, the guidebook says to pop over the ridge crest and follow low broad ledges to the summit block. When I dropped over to the north side, nothing looked particularly good in the dark, so I once again climbed back up the ridge crest beyond the last tower. Todd then led a spectacularly exposed mantle right on the ridge crest and the summit block was ours. The left chimney on the summit block was trivial.

The next business was finding the descent. We quickly located the first rappel station, and I started down. Rapping straight down I soon got suspicious that I was headed to no man's land. I climbed partway back up and traversed to the left (looking down). One has to continually traverse left (looking down) whenever possible in order to get back to the ridge crest above Cirque Lake. Otherwise one will simply rap down to Shadow Lake. After a few raps and some traversing on big ledges we came to some plush bivy sites. A rappel anchor 10 feet above us may have marked the notch that we were supposed to descend from, but the thought never occurred to us at the time. The description didn't say anything about having to climb up a short wall at the end of the traverse. We thought that we hadn't yet descended 300 feet as the guidebook described. While we took off our wind gear at the bivy site, some kind of rat like creature sauntered up. We shooed it away when it began tasting our 0.75 camalot. I thought that the fur was too light, the tail too short and the eyes too big for a rat.

We continued traversing left and finding rappel stations, always looking for a magical ledge system that would take us to a notch above Cirque Lake. We never found such a ledge system and soon we had rapped down much more than 300 feet. It was clear to me that we had missed the standard descent. The fact that rappel stations continued to appear suggested that there was more than one way back to the Cirque. Finally there were no more raps, we were on very chossy down-sloping rock, and it appeared that there were dangerously steep slabs below us. With only headlamps, one cannot ascertain broad landscape features. We decided to bivy. Of course, if we knew we were going to bivy, we could have stayed at the plush bivy sites above. Instead, it was sloping crumbling granite for us. We placed what pro we could and put on all the clothing we had with us. Even in the summer, night at 12,000 feet altitude isn't warm.

At first light Todd belayed me down and around to the left. We were indeed exposed to steep slabs below, but traversing above them to safe ground was easy. Soon we unroped and began bouldering back up to the ridge above the Cirque. The reason that there were no more raps was evident. One was expected to down climb and traverse the last bit, something that would have been easy with daylight.

The first notch we came to had no rap station, but the second did. Three raps later we were back in the Cirque. Todd stepped on the frozen snow patch at the base and accelerated into the scree, scraping himself up a bit. I wisely grabbed a sharp rock and down climbed some frozen steps. Later in the day that snow patch would make for an easy glissade.

Todd's knee was acting up, so I took the rope and rack and consequently lagged behind. Back near the campsite I got lost. We had no tent, and our gear was stashed under a rock. There were many bands of trees with nearby gullies, and they all looked about the same. Comically I circled around randomly until by chance I stumbled back into camp. I had not chosen to remember enough landmarks. It was not that uncommon apparently. We heard others woefully calling for their friends and wandering around. We decided to take a rest day.

As for the climb, Todd thought that it might be one of the best climbs he had ever done. It is probably a little more difficult than the 5.6 rating suggests. It was my 24th 50-classic climb and I rate it as one of the better of the group.

Editor's Note: The author is a Major Contributor to the North American Classics project.