Teebone Ridge 4-25-04

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Teebone Ridge SW Spur Point 6708

(USGS Big Devil Peak )

3-28-04

Party:

Mountaineers Winter Scramble: Matt Burton, Paul Kuhn, Eric Johnson, Jerry Chang, Jack Stowe, Randy Sperry.

Highlights:

Teebone ridge provides an ideal viewpoint for the arc of peaks surrounding Marble Creek cirque. From the base of the ridge, Monogram Lake lies in the foreground below, and the crest of peaks above stretches from Teebone itself to Backbone Ridge, Dorado Needle, Eldorado’s huge west face, Triad, and Hidden Lake Peak. In 2002, I crossed this same location while exiting from the Dorado-Backbone Traverse, but clouds hid the crests then. I always wanted to go back and get a clear view of the traverse peaks, and today’s bright sunny weather fulfilled my wish.

Backbone Ridge, Dorado Needle, Eldorado, & Triad

Details:

We started from the Lookout Mountain trailhead (1255 feet) with some fog in the valley. As we ascended the first thousand feet, the sun burned through the fog and cast some bright sunbeams and rainbow sunbursts among the trees.

Around 3000 feet, we lost the trail in an open meadow. On our right was the ridge that stretches south from the trail pass above Monogram Lake, so we took a direct route by heading slightly east of north and traversing steeply upward until we reached the ridge crest. There was also some avalanche danger from a foot of fresh snow, and this route let us stay off of any open slopes. As we progressed upward through open forest 4000 and 5000 feet, the clear sunny day turned the fresh snow to a slippery wet mush, and our progress was slow.

Then we crossed the timberline and enjoyed wide views and firm windswept snow for the rest of the day. There was one steep section at 5600 feet, but fortunately the terrain was too steep to hold snow, so we could scramble up on the rocks. Point 6708 itself was very wind-crusted, with cornices thrusting out along the north side of the crest of Point 6844. I had hoped to continue on to Point 6844, but the sun-facing slope was too soft to traverse today.

From the summit we could look north to Big Devil, east to the Marble Creek cirque peaks, south to the Boulder Peak areas where I had been two weeks earlier, and west to Lookout Mountain. Since the summit was windy, we stayed only for pictures and then dropped down lower for lunch and my tea.