Great Tr. Finally took the time to read the lengthy report. Good job a lot happened.It alls looks wonderful until I saw the "mini E-Ledges" That would never be doable for me. Sorry.
Glad everyone had a fantastic DV experience.
Thanks Rod, but you might surprise yourself. A couple of years ago I never would have imagined myself climbing this Upper Butte. When John and I hit that ledge in the photo, there was some serious discussion about continuing, or just turning back and calling it a day. It's every bit as dramatic in person as the photo suggests. We knew there would be a fair amount of class 3 climbing on this peak, but the exposure was at times a lot more than we expected. We decided to forge across the ledge - carefully - and found that on the return it wasn't nearly as intimidating as that first stroll across it. By and large we had solid, well-placed hand and foot holds the last 300 feet to the summit, so the actual climbing wasn't that difficult - it was just the mental aspect of ignoring the long drops just iches away that took a while to get comfortable with.
