Alright so me and @WarverineMMA set off to get a hike in the some exposure and heavy scrambling! Since it on the quest to get all the 13ers I figured a loop to efficiently tackle 4 13ers without orphaning any peaks was to get North Star, Wheeler, Drift and Fletcher and to end on Quandary. It’s been on my list of ridges for over a year and I had it labeled as “The Big One.”

First off, the ridge is long and you definitely need a good weather day for it. It’s not the biggest in terms of elevation gain or even mileage but it’s hard to make good time on the ridge—especially between wheeler and drift. We’re fast hikers and it took us 12 hours to get all 5 peaks. There’s also not much beta on it and I would like to add another trip report here to bring some more eyes to this magnificent ridge!

Logistical advice: I would strongly recommend a car shuttle for it and not walk the road back to Hoosier like we unfortunately did. You could park at Hoosier with one vehicle and either pay to park at the Quandary TH or the shuttle parking lot and take the shuttle back to your vehicle in Breck and then drive back to the other car.

Report part 1: North Star: The route mainly takes you up a road that eventually you will veer off of to head directly for the ridge. Following the road too long will lead you toward wheeler lake and NOT the North Star Summit. North is basic talus class 2 and the ridge to the actual summit—which I believe is much further west than the Gaia app shows is actually quite long. There’s nothing difficult about it but for some reason this portion seemed to just drag on.

Report part 2: North Star to Wheeler: there’s so easy class 3 stuff as you descend to the saddle between Wheeler and North Star. This section is very straightforward. Once you reach the saddle you’ll encounter some cliffs, we went to the south side of these cliffs and went across some semi-loose dirt ledges before coming up a gully to regain the ridge. From here we climbed a couple exposed moves on the ridge proper to get to some easier terrain. There’s a few points where you’ll veer off the ridge to the south (climbers right) up a few loose gullies. We ended up missing one of these bypasses and did a very exposed downclimb and didn’t realize till afterwards there was a chill bypass to the south. You’ll be on the ridge, then off the ridge a handful of times almost always going to the south side when you hop off the direct ridge. The ridge eventually led us to a slab section that we climbed, it wasn’t too bad, but not easy either. We both compared it to similar moves as the second flatiron. But this section is only 15-20 feet or so. After following the ridge a bit you’ll end up on the summit ridge that joins up with the Wheeler standard route. From here there’s a few options to gain the summit, by this point we took a right turn now looking at the summit ridge which goes north to south instead of the ridge from North Star which goes East/west. There’s some blocky tan boulders that have a few semi exposed moves but nothing too difficult, we went on the boulders that were climbers left but there might be some easier lines. Once atop this, you’ll be on the summit of wheeler which consists of a couple small towers with easy scrambling in between.

Part 3 wheeler to drift: by this point you’ll want to scan the clouds and make sure you have plenty of time and good weather to tackle this next section, which will take you a few hours. Me and Logan are pretty fast hikers and it took us almost 3 hours to get to drift from wheeler.
some notes: this ridge has some easy sections and then some more intense sections, but all of it is pretty slow going and it’s difficult to make good time here.

the ridge starts off mild and if you are direct on the ridge you’ll quickly come up to a big white rock that ends in a small cliff. Just before that there is a shabby gully you can climb down and around to bypass the cliff and regain the ridge. As PGRES trip report accurately stated, there are 3 notable towers on this ridge and then dozens of smeller gendarmes aka mini towers you’ll deal with. The first tower which we’ll call tower one presents itself fairly quickly after you regain the ridge. The scrambling is pretty straightforward but I wouldn’t consider it easy by any means, up to this point on the wheeler and drift ridge we found the North Star to wheeler section to be a little bit more difficult—but that will soon change. Again, with this ridge as the same as North Star to wheeler, most of the bypasses will be to the climbers left. I can’t actually remember going to the climbers right significantly off of the ridge ever. But this comes with a price, the ridge direct goes for the most part until you’ll see obvious cliffs that you will need to bypass to the left. Now, some of the towers and gendarmes that are both climbable up and down on the ridge also have a few bypasses but we quickly discovered the bypasses are loose and dangerous so we opted to try to stick to the ridge as best we could. We chose to follow the rule to not climb up anything we felt we couldn’t downclimb and this proved to be a good idea as there were a couple mini towers we found didn’t have the best down climbs and we skirted around when we had to. Tower 2 was pretty straightforward again and we felt easier than tower 1 but that is a very subjective opinion. Before tower 3 you’ll encounter a cliff this was the second most prominent bypass again to climbers left, along with the one shortly after the wheeler summit. This second bypass had some more tricky route finding to regards in the ridge, we found a notch than ended up with a pretty difficult downclimb that in the beginning doesn’t contain the best holds or angles. It’s kind of a slabby section we had to use our hands on a rock to pull ourselves around of. This down climb ends on a mini saddle that is the low point of tower 3. Once you complete tower 3 the terrain with slowly mellow out until the final couple hundred feet to drift where you’ll notice the difficulty significantly DECREASES to class 2.

part 4: drift to fletcher: this section is probably the easiest of the day but also contains 1 section that is the most difficult climbing of the day: the notch. The downclimb to the notch is slightly tricky, and goes a bit further to the right than we expected though I’d imagine you could get down to the notch more than 1 way. For the notch, we climbed the first couple blocks directly in front and we traversed a ledge system that required confidence and commitment to a handhold that pulls you around a rock to finish the “5.5” section. From there you’ll have some talus to descend and 1 easy little tower to climb before you make the final push to the summit of Fletcher on class 2 rock.

Part 5 the quandary west ridge finisher: coming off Fletcher was easy in terms of technical difficulty but annoying in terms of pleasant hiking terrain. It’s literally just a sea of blocks that like to move underneath you. We followed the path of least resistance and unded up at the saddle to Quandary. There’s lots of cairns here and a fairly beaten path that takes you to just about 14k, from here you’ll climb up and down a couple small towers until you hit a long and slightly exposed downclimb. From there you’ll have 1 more tower to climb up and that puts you on the summit ridge. From here it’s a couple minute hike to the summit of Quandary.

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