Gregory Karl
10-05-2011, 08:49 PM
Inge Aiken and I picked a chilly and blustery day to climb the new Ore Bed Brook slide on Saddleback. While yacking on our way up the Trail in the morning gloom we managed to miss a couple hundred feet of open slabs and lumber piles off to our right where the slide ran out toward John's Brook. We're not sure whether or not it actually reaches the brook. It wasn't until about 2,500 feet that we whacked over to the slide, which we then climbed for about 1,800 vertical feet—to within 150 feet of the summit.
Given the days of rainy weather early in the week, it was no surprise to find the brook running strong through the fields of rubble, mud, and downed wood in the lower stretches. A few hundred feet higher there were a series of beautiful falls and rock formations and then a lot of open slabs. Pools of water with swirling white froth on the surface, some kind of mineral runoff from the newly exposed rock, were everywhere. We wove back and forth across this obstacle course, soon catching glimpses of open rock far above in the distance, five or six different slides shifting into and out of view as our course turned with the bends in the brook. When we spotted the higher section of our slide sweeping upward toward the summit, we felt the usual trepidation. It looked really steep and complex—no simple flat slabs, but a broken edifice of ramps, dikes, walls and stacks of stone blocks fading into misty obscurity. Of course the steepness turned out to be partially illusory. Those things always look intimidating and impassable from a distance.
As we approached the steep pitch, maybe the last 600 feet or so, we saw that it should be easy to find a comfortable route up. We were cheered by a late but welcome appearance of the sun and by seeing the last rags of mist blown over Gothics to reveal blue skies. On the ascent there were always a number of options to choose from. Often the best route was up a dike or nestled against a rock wall. As we approached the steep headwall, our courses diverged, Inge angling up the right side on a kind of natural ramp, me going dead center at the steepest pitch. One would think Inge would have the easier time of it but the opposite proved true. On my course there were a couple of long dikes, the last one covering the final hundred or more feet of the climb. It was between a foot or two wide and deep, ran dead straight up the wall, and had rough, grippy, striated rock on its bottom. It was like ascending a staircase with convenient handrails on either side, which neutralized any problem the steep pitch might have caused. Quite a delightful surprise for the end of a climb. Inge got into some mischief over to the right and I lost sight of her for a while. She'll have to explain what happened if she wants.
After exiting into the trees above, I whacked over to the right to see what Inge was up to. A few minutes later she appeared, clearly on some kind of heavy adrenaline rush and describing sketchy moves, sheer cliffs in her path, and other harrowing adventures that I didn't follow all that well. Bottom line: going straight up the dikes in the center of the wall seems to be the less scary and dangerous approach.
The climb to the summit was short but nasty due to cliff lines and tough pigmy spruce, which the crawling mist had left dripping wet. By the time we reached the trail, just above the famous cliffs, we were soaked and vulnerable to the gusting winds. But the views of the new slides on Basin and the rest of the sunlit landscape kept us up there for a while, sometimes huddled behind a rock and nibbling our lunches.
We hadn't discussed what we would do once on the summit of Saddleback but it turned out we were on the same page: get out of the cold and descend by the trail. On the way down we ended up getting rerouted out onto another new slide which was liberally streaked with yellow paint. If hikers are actually supposed to follow the yellow out onto and then straight down the steep slabs, we have to question the sanity of whoever made the rerouting decisions. There were numerous ladders, bridges, and other new woodwork on the edge of the slide. As we descended part of the slide we heard someone yelling "Yoohoo, Inge!"—friends who had seen her name in the register and who recognized her hat from below(?) The rest of the return was uneventful. We were out for just about nine hours.
Great hike and great day Inge! I did get my pancakes—with fries!
pics:
https://picasaweb.google.com/curugroth/SBSlide#
Given the days of rainy weather early in the week, it was no surprise to find the brook running strong through the fields of rubble, mud, and downed wood in the lower stretches. A few hundred feet higher there were a series of beautiful falls and rock formations and then a lot of open slabs. Pools of water with swirling white froth on the surface, some kind of mineral runoff from the newly exposed rock, were everywhere. We wove back and forth across this obstacle course, soon catching glimpses of open rock far above in the distance, five or six different slides shifting into and out of view as our course turned with the bends in the brook. When we spotted the higher section of our slide sweeping upward toward the summit, we felt the usual trepidation. It looked really steep and complex—no simple flat slabs, but a broken edifice of ramps, dikes, walls and stacks of stone blocks fading into misty obscurity. Of course the steepness turned out to be partially illusory. Those things always look intimidating and impassable from a distance.
As we approached the steep pitch, maybe the last 600 feet or so, we saw that it should be easy to find a comfortable route up. We were cheered by a late but welcome appearance of the sun and by seeing the last rags of mist blown over Gothics to reveal blue skies. On the ascent there were always a number of options to choose from. Often the best route was up a dike or nestled against a rock wall. As we approached the steep headwall, our courses diverged, Inge angling up the right side on a kind of natural ramp, me going dead center at the steepest pitch. One would think Inge would have the easier time of it but the opposite proved true. On my course there were a couple of long dikes, the last one covering the final hundred or more feet of the climb. It was between a foot or two wide and deep, ran dead straight up the wall, and had rough, grippy, striated rock on its bottom. It was like ascending a staircase with convenient handrails on either side, which neutralized any problem the steep pitch might have caused. Quite a delightful surprise for the end of a climb. Inge got into some mischief over to the right and I lost sight of her for a while. She'll have to explain what happened if she wants.
After exiting into the trees above, I whacked over to the right to see what Inge was up to. A few minutes later she appeared, clearly on some kind of heavy adrenaline rush and describing sketchy moves, sheer cliffs in her path, and other harrowing adventures that I didn't follow all that well. Bottom line: going straight up the dikes in the center of the wall seems to be the less scary and dangerous approach.
The climb to the summit was short but nasty due to cliff lines and tough pigmy spruce, which the crawling mist had left dripping wet. By the time we reached the trail, just above the famous cliffs, we were soaked and vulnerable to the gusting winds. But the views of the new slides on Basin and the rest of the sunlit landscape kept us up there for a while, sometimes huddled behind a rock and nibbling our lunches.
We hadn't discussed what we would do once on the summit of Saddleback but it turned out we were on the same page: get out of the cold and descend by the trail. On the way down we ended up getting rerouted out onto another new slide which was liberally streaked with yellow paint. If hikers are actually supposed to follow the yellow out onto and then straight down the steep slabs, we have to question the sanity of whoever made the rerouting decisions. There were numerous ladders, bridges, and other new woodwork on the edge of the slide. As we descended part of the slide we heard someone yelling "Yoohoo, Inge!"—friends who had seen her name in the register and who recognized her hat from below(?) The rest of the return was uneventful. We were out for just about nine hours.
Great hike and great day Inge! I did get my pancakes—with fries!
pics:
https://picasaweb.google.com/curugroth/SBSlide#