Prologue: (Skip over this part if you just want the climbing action stuff. Or hell, if you're so damn strapped for time just glance over the damn pictures, sheesh!)

Early in July Otto had so much fun watching me tumble and scrape at Index Town Wall that we decided we should make a date to climb for the whole weekend (!) sometime in late July. The date came nearer and Otto confessed a "mania" (no, I am not making this up) for the Index Peak Traverse. He had previously summited the North Peak, and I had previously attempted the East (descent) route, so together, we had the climb bracketed. How difficult could all that stuff in the middle possibly be?

A drive up Hwy 2 (my sister, with LA roots, calls it "the Two"), the week before indicated an absence of handy snowpatches for water en route. A short but violent thundershower or two the day before our scheduled departure, combined with the Beckey passage, "slabs, may be problematic if wet", was enough to start thinking "backup plan". But enough of this pre-climb jitters nonsense...(I mean, none of you really care about this part do you?)

Mt. Index from The Two

The actual climbing part:

We arrived at the base of the N Ridge around 8ish Saturday morning with our carefully thought out mini-minimal bivy gear supplemented with around 6 lbs. (3 liters) of water. The day, so far, was quite foggy and overcast, and we crossed paths in the bush with a pair retreating due to their disdain for the wetness.

The air was wet, but the rock fairly dry, as we scrambled up a few hundred feet on solid red rock to a nest of rap slings on old pitons where we roped up. Three pitches of rock, the last of which got sorta sketchy past a bunch of old pitons, got us to a point where we declared ourselves off route (probably Beckey's "longer" alternate up the face of the rock bowl). Luckily we found a wonderful brush-covered catwalk which transported us right back on route to the wonderful brush-covered N Face bowl. Two more brush-lovely sideways rope drags got us to the North Rib.

North Rib = cool, one pitch especially so. Sorta airy, pretty solid rock, just a bit o bush. I think the especially fun pitch is pictured below, behind the smiling Otto.

North Rib of North Peak

North Peak was attained and we made those silly "one finger" things while sticking our tongues out to indicate bagging the first peak of the traverse. Then we ate lunch.

Getting down from the North Peak into the notch was probably the sketchiest part of the traverse. Downclimb mossy steep chossy gulley, rappel off detached block, scramble across exposed dirty ledge, rap again, repeat.

Exposed ledges getting over to North-Middle peak notch

View of North Peak from the South

Once down in the notch of committment, we had a bit of doubt as to the correct route to continue. Our first guess worked. We climbed steeply up chimneys and such with a bunch of loose looking things (but not very many actually were loose), which brought us to a majorly cool exposed ridge. Many pitches on this thing brought us to the Middle Peak summit about 8ish. Silly two finger, stick tongue out thing.

Otto leading on ridge

Otto following on ridge

Ridge without Otto (taken from Middle Peak)

We bivied down on the SE shoulder of the Middle Peak. We found no snow or water, but because of the nice cool temps in the morning, we each still had about 2 liters of water. Also, a snowpatch was spied down in the Middle/main peak notch, so we knew we'd have water in the morning. Thus, we could party down. Otto got blotto (well, not really, but I had to write that somewhere).

Otto shivered miserably that night with his bivy bag-space blanket combo, while I was supremely comfortable with my newly-purchased fancy-pancy ultralightweight sleeping bag (click me).

Day two found us melting some snow with my newly-purchased fancy-pancy ultralightweight stove then trying to figure out what the hell a damn "wedge gendarme" is. Well, we found it, and it added a bit more exposed ridge climbing. Then scary steep heather mixed with scary steep loose gulley traverse, a bit more of the hateful hateful brush then topside! One PM. Three fingers, wag tongue.

Walk down was cool. We came across these idyllic little tarns a bit like Tank Lakes or the Enchantments even, where we did some easy bouldering.

Tarns on the backside of Index

Great frictiony rock for easy bouldering

We located Beckey's obvious gulley (go left from idyllic little tarns). It is completely melted out. Fun scrambling on surprisingly clean steep rock got us down. At one giant overhang we utilized a fixed rope to make a 50' free rapell (possibly could have downclimbed on skiers right).

After this the descent pretty much sucked. Steep talus, the kind that's usually covered with snow, so is now precariously perched, sucked. Then the bushy steep ridge was minorly sucky. Then finding ourselves lost in impenetrable brush, worse than any on the climb so far, added a final stab and scrape of suckiness (lot's of berries though!). Finally, we stumbled past Lake Serene, then trudged down superhighway trail to car.

Fun!

Epilogue: I have heard a few people recommend this as a good climb to do...once.

Gear Notes:
Medium rack (single cams + stoppers)
One 60m rope
Approach shoes
Extra water