Glacier Mountaineering Society

Mon, Jul 22 2013 - Mount Vaught (View Original Event Details)

Coordinator(s):		Tim Anderson
Participants:		Tim Anderson, Greg Notess, Cecelia Notess, Rodney Falkenberg, Carly Hohf

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Write Up:
What a fun and easy route. I chose to try the South West Ridge Route described in Blake Passmore in his book series Climb Glacier. The route is long I had planned for a 14 hour day, and I think it took us most of that, but it was an easy and enjoyable trip.

We started at 6am at the Trout Lake trail head. There was a little grumbling about the early start, but everyone was happy later when they realized we got two thirds of our vertical out of the way in cool shade before the unrelenting sun of a south facing slope was upon us. We left the trail where it crosses Howe Ridge and started cross country up the normal ascent for Stanton Mountain. We bypassed the summit of Stanton about 400ft shy of the top by crossing a goat trail on the west side. We crossed to east side when we reached the saddle and followed just below the ridge over to Vaught. We found easy climbing in the shelf of the gulley just east of the ridge until we came to impassible cliffs. Following below them over to the west side of the ridge it all opens up again and there is easy scrambling up to the summit.

While eating lunch at the summit enjoying the views we caught a flash of bright color and see three other member joining us, Frank, Brian, and Denise who had come up the South East ridge route, Their legs look pretty beat up from the bushwhack they had to endure.

We descended Vaught the same way we went up. It turned out that several of the crew had never been to the summit of Stanton so we decided to climb its north ridge. The printed route described going this way, but in reverse. We eventually came to large cliff that we could not find the route around it described, Greg climbed it but no one else felt comfortable without a belay so we retreated back to the goat trail around to the south side and half the crew head up to the summit while the rest of us took a well-deserved break.

We took our time walking down the Trout Lake trail enjoying the loads of huckleberries that were available.

Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Tim Anderson at twamontana@gmail.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.