Northwest Ridge

by Sarah
(Bishop, California)

We (Sarah, Kerry, and Chris) paddled packrafts in from desolation sound, hiked up the homfray drainage with much bushwhacking, circled back west along the ridge to the col, climbed the NW ridge in about 10 pitches at roughly grade III 5.10, (mostly good steep rock, good pro, fun hand cracks, there are probably easier variations), down the 3rd/4th class south face, and then descended down into the valley just west of denman, down the creek to Daniels river valley where we paddled out to Powell lake. The descent from our camp on the ridge was technical and we ended up rappelling a few times. We had a heinous amount of gear, did a heinous amount of bushwhacking, and went a lot slower than we thought we would, 8 days in all... Initially we had thought to do most of our climbing in the chusan range but we were traveling too slowly and denman just looked too cool. So the NW Ridge goes! What an amazing place.