Summary:

• Partner(s): Solo
• Difficulty: Class 4ish
• Objective Hazard: Medium
• Spice Level: Tapatio
• Stats: 10ish mi, 4.5kish gain, 6.5 hrs C2C from Rock of Ages
• Peaks: Three ranked 13ers. 13540B --> Fowler --> Boskoff
• Advice: Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, Stay the Ridge

I am writing this quick trip report to provide some information on this linkup which has few mentions and some level of notoriety in the TRs about it. It will be short and focus only on the cruxes because I wasn't planning on writing a report. Hell, I wasn't even planning on doing the full traverse until I got there. However, since the TRs on this site, LoJ, and Peakbagger for these three peaks call for bringing a rope (Presto's report), dangerous loose rock (all reports ever written for the San Miguels), or simply walking many extra miles the long way 'round to get all three in a day (Furthermore's report), I figured I'd let people know that the traverse does go pretty cleanly, all things considered.

I had a weekend of chossineering planned in the San Miguels, but no partner for Saturday, the first day of fall. In the name of cleaning out a group, I decided on trying to tag 13540B, Fowler, and Boskoff by myself, then the following two days cleaning out the rest of the peaks I wanted in the Lizard Head Wilderness with Justin. As indicated above, the only TR I could find that completed this traverse brought a rope (but didn't use it) and went in the opposite direction. I knew of others that had done it, but no TRs were found. So, I was originally going to follow the Furthermore route and take the long way around to Boskoff. I didn't look too hard at the traverse intricacies but knew that the most serious climbing was descending Fowler, heading west towards Boskoff.

The morning start was rough and quite cold. About a mile up the Rock of Ages trail, I realized that I left my helmet in the car, great start. I also realized that I should've brought something better than my summer sun gloves, great start x2. I danced along the old mining roads up School Bus Basin, eventually reaching the former bus parking spot at the end of the road. I noticed that there was another climber behind me some distance, apparently on the same route. Most of the rest of the crowds had continued along into Silver Pick Basin. On one hand, I was a little disappointed that the bus was no longer there, but on the other, it was nice that the basin was being cleaned up and somewhat restored.

It was a short grunt of a talus climb up to the 13540B/Fowler saddle. The view of the north faces of El Diente and Mount Wilson were great, with a nice dusting of fresh snow. A couple friends were going to be trying for the El D --> Wilson --> Gladstone --> Wilson Pk mega combo that day...the snow made that impractical. I couldn't see them on the route with my binoculars and later learned they did a late start and just the El D/Wilson traverse in the afternoon. Quick jaunt along the ridge to 13540B and then double-back to the saddle and on my way to Fowler. Nothing too notable about the ridge/summit, pleasant class 1/2. The ridge most of the rest of the way to Fowler was pleasant class 2/2+ right up until the final summit push. Here, I took the gully just one to the left of ridge proper. It was class 3, but had some loose rocks that required some special care. This was the same gully annotated in Furthermore's report. Ridge proper would've gone at class 4 and been a plenty viable option as well.

From atop Fowler I had some decisions to make. I wasn't originally planning on doing the traverse because of the reputation. However, I was feeling good and not in the mood to walk the long way around. The idea of orphaning Boskoff was an immediate non-starter. Boskoff looked pretty far, but all of the visible difficulties were immediate and going to be downclimbs. I decided to just go for it, with the fall-back that I know that I can climb back up any sketchiness that I'm able to climb down. This was assumption was mostly correct, the only caveat being that I couldn't see what I think was the crux (number 3 in topo map), the giant gash in the ridge just before summiting Boskoff. Either way, the decision was made, and I set off down Fowler's connecting ridge towards Boskoff, westward ho!

I took some pictures of the difficulties, but the best overarching beta that I can provide is to stay ridge proper. Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, Stay the Ridge. Trust that it will go, even when it doesn't look like it initially. Presto and crew dropped very low to avoid difficulties in the ridge and encountered terrible choss on the south side. It sounded heinous. It looked heinous from my vantage point. I don't want to bag on them, as their report was the main reason that I felt like I could go for it; they carried a rope and didn't use it, they climbed the traverse without knowing how bad it was going into it. I had the luxury of knowing it likely went fine, its a different ball game. My gpx track appears to be on the ridge nearly 100% of the time. The rock quality was better than expected if staying on the ridge. On the downclimb all the way to the saddle between Fowler and Boskoff, I dropped off more than 10 feet from ridge proper just one time (at crux 2). And, unexpectedly, I found that dropping off the north side looked better than south towards Navajo basin on that time that I did have to drop below the ridge. For crux 3, I also dropped north, descending maybe 30 vertical feet, but south probably would have been better. These are the only times I dropped off the ridge, sensing a theme yet?

Pretty quickly after leaving the summit, the ridge narrowed into a spicy fin with fairly large drops on either side. This is crux 1. I stayed on top of the fin until I came up on a very airy 4th class downclimb to a leap of faith notch/gap. Going around would have been impractical. The rock was good here, but still test your holds, a mistake would be catastrophic. After this little section, the ridge continued with some good class 2/3/4 climbing. The ridge starts to make a descender's right hand turn and drop steeply, things look quite spicy ahead. You can't quite see if your little sidewalk in the sky continues to be travelable for much longer, it looks suspect. A sub-ridge shoots left down towards Navajo basin, creating a potential opportunity to drop left/southward off the Fowler/Boskoff ridge proper. Don't do this. Stay the ridge for a little longer, continue onwards until dropping left would be a class 5 endeavor and traveling forward would be a class 5 endeavor, both as downclimbs. Here, there is an opportunity for a nice little sneak down off the north (right) side of the ridge to bypass the class 5 terrain. Class 4. I dropped off the ridge maybe 20-30 feet and bypassed/traversed along the base of the cliff, and even found what I think was a half-assed cairn. The drop down and bypass were obvious, as your goal here is to drop as little off the ridge as possible. The rock is pretty terrible when not on ridge proper, take care.

After this second crux, the terrain is much more forgiving for the rest of the way down to the saddle and along the beginning of the climb to Boskoff. It is pretty long, however. The rock quality is better than anticipated, but not great. On the ridge proper it was good enough for reasonably efficient travel and some fun scrambling. Begin climbing up Boskoff's east ridge, eventually reaching a subpeak/bump. Here, you will get a good view of the last difficulty between you and the end. There is a massive gash in the ridge (that makes a sweet couloir pointing directly down to Navajo Lake). There are cliffs making up both walls. I dropped north again to bypass the downclimb cliff and enter the bottom of the notch. This was some awful, loose class 2/3 downclimbing. Lots of rocks and sand trundled down even with the utmost care. Not difficult, but annoying. I think that going and finding a slightly more difficult climb down the Navajo (south) side into the gash would have been preferable as the rock looked way better. Ridge proper would have gone at low class 5 with some cool looking chimney options, you could be descending chimneys like ol' Santa Claus.

From the other side, climbing out of the gash looked like it was going to be a breeze. There was an obvious weakness in the cliff wall on the other side, right at the saddle (no dropping) that yielded some great class 3/4 climbing for about 15 feet. However, much to my surprise, it ended with a bunch of air and a 3-5 foot gap that one would have to stem/chimney across to finish the rest of the climb out of the gash. Awesome little feature to look at, however, I needed to somehow get across this thing. Falling 25 feet into a 5 foot wide rock hallway and freezing to death after 3 days didn't sound great, so I decided to not try to free this really cool chimney feature that would have probably yielded some excellent 5.2-5.6 climbing. I retreated back to the saddle and decided to look for a better way around. I went north side bypass (again), and was able to climb up and around the cliffs, keeping it at a (very airy) class 4 grade. Around this time, the climber behind me summited Fowler and I was able to get some pics of him (I think) through my binoculars. If you summited Fowler on 09/23/2023, lmk and I can send these to you.

After this, there was some more class 2+/3 climbing to get to Boskoff's summit a short distance away, but nothing too special to note. I hung out on top of Boskoff for a while and met a fellow forum member (tmud) who came up from Woods Lake via the west ridge. We chatted mountains/skiing/etc. and headed down together, as I would be taking the Woods Lake trail and connecting with the Elk Creek trail back to Rock of Ages. The trails were good quality and made for a fun little trail run back to the car, a great ending to a great day. The Elk Creek trail has lots of little ups and downs as you traverse along the lower basins to the north of Fowler/Boskoff, made for some good running. I made it back to the car after 6.5 hours, with my watch recording 4.6k of vert over 10 miles.