Peak Eleven

Route: SW Ramp/Gully
Posted On: 10/2/2023, By: b_esker
Info: I was looking forward to seeing the summit register dating back to the 60s that Furthermore mentioned in his TR in 2007. Unfortunately the cap was busted and the paper is gone :/ Just posting to say Peak 11 could use a new register, paper & pen :) 

Route: Southwest Ramp/Slopes/Gully
Posted On: 7/21/2021, By: supranihilest
Info: From Twin Lakes the route up Peak Eleven is generally obvious - most of the peak is clearly highly technical, so the big right-trending ramp across the south face is the easy route. We hiked up grass and broken rock to the bottom of the ramp, then up the ramp itself which is steep and grassy. Exposure is reasonable but it was nice to use the rock wall next to the ramp for hands. Eventually the ramp ends in a short series of wet and extremely water polished steps. There was water running on parts of the steps when we climbed it, and the wet spots were absolutely tractionless. There was enough dry rock to stay off the wet stuff but we had to be a little creative with it. The steps lead to a large chockstone lodged in the gully. This was the crux of the day - Class 3 up and Class 4 down. The largest boulder was the size of a car, the remaining rock smashed in there was smaller. The wall to climber's right, as well as the chockstone itself, were fairly devoid of holds, so it involved friction stemming and friction slab to get up high enough where one could find better holds. This was 10-20 feet of Class 3 total and none of us could tell how well locked in place any of these rocks were. Test every hold, the first person to pull one of these stones is going to have a bad time. Above this the difficulty relented to Class 2+ on complete garbage scree and talus. The remaining route to the summit simply follows the gully. We reversed our route down and the crux chockstone felt more like Class 4 in reverse; we traversed over the top of it using the rock above for handholds, carefully turned to face outward, lowered down into a tenuous stemming position, and crabwalked down facing out. Fairly unpleasant section to down climb, and then we down climbed the wet steps. We returned to Twin Lakes from there.