Carbonate Mountain Trip Report 05/23/2026

Report Type	External
Peak(s)	Carbonate Mountain - 13,662 feet Cyclone Mountain - 13,616 feet "Lo Carb" - 13,598 feet Grizzly Mountain - 13,722 feet Unnamed 13082 - 13,082 feet Pomeroy Mountain - 13,164 feet "Van Wit" - 13,244 feet Van Wirt Mountain - 13,026 feet Monumental Peak - 13,375 feet Sewanee Peak - 13,139 feet
Date Posted	05/23/2026
Modified	05/29/2026
Date Climbed	05/22/2026
Author	KTags

Carbonate to Sewanee + Monumental Group
Yesterday I nabbed 10(+1) thirteener summits, with Brodie joining me for the first 6 before bailing due to fatigue off Pomeroy. Wind was consistently 20-40 mph all day, which nearly ended the day before it started as dawn was brutally cold on carbonate with the windchill. Most of the route is a nice alpine ridge run. The ridges between Low Carb and Grizzly, then Peak 13081 and Pomeroy had fairly lengthy class 3-4 scrambling with the odd low 5th move though, so keep that in mind if you attempt this route. This scrambling ultimately slowed us down significantly from planned 2.5-3 mph pace. Many of the ridge had snow, but fortunately it was Névé and stayed firm all day due to the wind. The north faces, chutes and bowls still had ample snow for some steep couloir climbs or ski descents with trail runner appropriate approaches. On the summit of Sewanee, I was at the end of my stamina and weather was starting to come in, so I bailed off the class 3 east ridge back to the car, cutting off the remainder of the planned route (in blue). The day ended with 8,500' of gain over 18.6 miles in about 11 hours. Redoing this route with my current start of the season stamina level, I would omit the Monumental group and finish off Taylor and Etna instead by either doing the class 5(?) north ridge of Sewanee from Pomeroy or dropping down east of Sewanee, and up the class 3 ridge I bailed down (Fun!) before continuing across to the last three peaks in the blue part of the route outline I took a ton of photos with a good camera, but even with maximum compression the site isn't permitting upload. Feel free to reach out at any time for photos or to address any questions you may have about the route. Update: Full report available here: https://medium.com/@kurttagliareni/eleven-summit-brutality-267bb9d280b2?postPublishedType=repub Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Carbonate to Sewanee + Monumental Group

Yesterday I nabbed 10(+1) thirteener summits, with Brodie joining me for the first 6 before bailing due to fatigue off Pomeroy. Wind was consistently 20-40 mph all day, which nearly ended the day before it started as dawn was brutally cold on carbonate with the windchill. Most of the route is a nice alpine ridge run. The ridges between Low Carb and Grizzly, then Peak 13081 and Pomeroy had fairly lengthy class 3-4 scrambling with the odd low 5th move though, so keep that in mind if you attempt this route. This scrambling ultimately slowed us down significantly from planned 2.5-3 mph pace. Many of the ridge had snow, but fortunately it was Névé and stayed firm all day due to the wind. The north faces, chutes and bowls still had ample snow for some steep couloir climbs or ski descents with trail runner appropriate approaches.

On the summit of Sewanee, I was at the end of my stamina and weather was starting to come in, so I bailed off the class 3 east ridge back to the car, cutting off the remainder of the planned route (in blue). The day ended with 8,500' of gain over 18.6 miles in about 11 hours.

Redoing this route with my current start of the season stamina level, I would omit the Monumental group and finish off Taylor and Etna instead by either doing the class 5(?) north ridge of Sewanee from Pomeroy or dropping down east of Sewanee, and up the class 3 ridge I bailed down (Fun!) before continuing across to the last three peaks in the blue part of the route outline

I took a ton of photos with a good camera, but even with maximum compression the site isn't permitting upload. Feel free to reach out at any time for photos or to address any questions you may have about the route.

Update: Full report available here: https://medium.com/@kurttagliareni/eleven-summit-brutality-267bb9d280b2?postPublishedType=repub

Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Comments or Questions

blazintoes	Free image hosting 5/24/2026 1:20am https://imgbb.com/ What did you think about the land of false summits? Nice loop! My wild ride was 1/2 of what you did over the faux winter we had and my summer wild ride was White via Little Browns then dropped into Browns and straight up to Jones, over to Shav then continued to Carb, Cyclone, Grizzly to Mamma was sweet. Long beautiful day in the land of many false summits. Was on Monumental and friends last November. The Sawatch are underrated. I like your loop style. Nice work!
d_baker	Saw you 5/24/2026 8:09pm On ridge to Pom. Nice work! I did Pomeroy first, and dropped down below and re-ascended to saddle for 070, or whatever it is now.
KTags	High elevation fun 5/25/2026 7:53am Blazintoes - Thanks! that sounds like a fun loop too! I enjoyed the high sustained elevation (minus the wind) and the scrambles a lot. I need to loop in mamma and a couple others at some point.to finish this group. D_baker Thats awesome! We saw someone (you?) on Pom silhouetted against the snow on the ridge close to the summit. By the time we got over there across the traverse, we couldn't locate you again. I'm working on a thorough trip write-up, and will see if I can edit this post and add photos through my imgur account. Last time I tried to edit a report though, it deleted the whole post, so It'll probably be a link to a blog post. I found it prudent to get something up quickly to update for current conditions.
Marmot72	damn 5/29/2026 4:47pm That's some inspired route planning! Having done those peaks in separate trips, I'm tired just looking at your lines on the map. What a day! RE Sewanee's north ridge to the saddle with Pomeroy, it is mostly class 3 and can be kept to harder than class 4.
KTags	Beta 5/29/2026 8:43pm Thanks for the kind words! I love map scouting random linkups and sending it. That's good to know about the N ridge of Sewanee, I hadn't seen much about it. The scrambles were definitely the most fun and the highlights of the route. That would be a great option for the original planned route and would save some elevation loss/gain.

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