Glacier Mountaineering Society

Fri, Aug 7 2009, Sat, Aug 8 2009, Sun, Aug 9 2009 - West 9430 (View Original Event Details)

Coordinator(s):		Steve Berg
Participants:		Steve Berg

Write Up:
West 9430 Peak - August 4-5, 2009 Coordinator: Steve Berg This unnamed peak in the Park's North Fork area is among the peaks (Parke 9,038 feet; East 9430 Peak; Kintla 10,101 feet; and Kinnerly 9,944 feet) forming a semi-circle draining north into the Upper Kintla Lake basin. It is rarely climbed except by Bill Blunk and Ralph Thornton who signed the register three times in the 1980s, and once in 1997. We started at Bowman Lake Campground (4,030 feet) and hiked the West Lakes Trail three miles to its intersection with the Akokala Lake Trail, then hiked the Akokala Lake Trail about one mile. There we left the trail to bushwhack north up the south ridge of Reuter Peak to an elevation of 7,430 feet. Most of the ridge was burned in the 2003 Wedge Canyon Fire. At the 7,430- foot point, Larry, Dell and Linda climbed Reuter Peak in a two-hour roundtrip diversion. They had not previously climbed Reuter and needed a little exercise. All six climbers then traversed about one mile to Long Bow Lake (6,890 feet), holding our elevation at about 7,430 feet across a goat trail on the west face of Reuter. When we first saw beautiful Longbow Lake, we were almost there; a classic Glacier Park lake at the base of a cirque. We left camp about 7 am the next day knowing we needed only 2,500 feet of elevation gain to the summit. We walked around the lake on a faint trail to the base of the mountain. With route-finding duties shared among the other five climbers, your humble narrator picked his way slowly up several cliff bands, traversing gully-to-gully. Most gullies afforded good climbing advantages, but were relatively short requiring traverses around outcroppings to reach the next parallel gully. In this manner, we moved up in mainly Class 3 reliable rock with a few short Class 4 pitches. Always on our right was the mountain's twin, East 9430 Peak. The summit of West 9430 Peak is protected by a false summit and small hidden snowfield, but by 10:15 we were on top. As the day was clear and bright, we had magnificent views, especially of Kintla Glacier immediately below us to the northeast, and the west face of Kintla Peak. The basin drained by Red Medicine Bow Creek to the north, and Long Knife Peak, were in clear view. We retraced our steps down the mountain arriving in camp about 1:30. With weather moving in, we decided to decamp immediately. We encountered light rain on the south ridge of Reuter, but not on the one-mile traverse across the face of Reuter which was fortunate since the goat trail is negligible and cuts a steep slope. We arrived at the campground at 8:30 p.m.. Trip stats: 21.6 miles; 5,837 feet elevation gain. My thanks to the other five climbers, among the best in our club, for their help and encouragement on this exploratory climb. Climbers were Larry Hiller, Linda Soper, Steve Berg, Dell Meuchel, Frank Wesolovski and Brian Kennedy.

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.