The Triad
Aug 24 & 29, 2003
by Thad Hink

On a particularly nice Sunday, Jim Lapp, Doug Bruland and myself set out to climb the middle peak of The Triad. We headed up the Cascade River Road and then left up a side road to the Sibley Creek trailhead. Despite the fine weather the atmosphere was hazy and smelled of smoke from the nearby forest fires that plagued the park during this dry summer. We hiked the Sibley Creek trail up the valley until we reached the top of the basin, then we headed up to the pass via the first creek which we found out later was more difficult then taking the second creek bed. From the pass we followed a boot path up to a high point and then followed the ridge eventually ending up in an easterly direction.

The route along the ridge becomes impeded and we dropped down the north side to a snowfield. The steep upper part of the slope was hard firn and we had not brought crampons with. We could see that lower down the snowfield had softer snow and less of an angle that would permit us to cross. We ended up wasting a fair amount of time trying to find a way down on to the snowfield. After a bite of lunch we crossed the slope heading for the second notch. From there we climbed to a flat spot and found the descent gully (the east one). The gully was in pretty good shape but we still chose to space ourselves out to protect the lower climber from rock fall. After descending maybe 200’ we traversed to climbers right around the bowl to notch.

From the notch we crossed over large rock and talus to a couple of bivy sites and a short boot path. By this point it was nearly 3pm and it was obvious that we could not make the summit and back to the ridge before dark. So we turned around headed back.

Five days later (Friday) Jim and I decided to make another run at it and this time we brought crampons and climbing gear with so as not to be deterred. We followed our previous route to the snowfield and this time traversed the higher icy slope with crampons, giving the calves a good workout with sidestepping. We reached out furthest spot from the previous trip three hours earlier than on Sunday. We traversed past two ribs and then up the basin under the summit and had a bite of lunch.

From there we headed up to the ridge between the east and middle summits and scrambled the few rock impediments to the final walkup to the middle summit. We attained the summit (7520’) just before 3 pm. After signing the register and taking some photos we reversed our route and were back at the truck by sunset.

The climbing part of the trip wasn’t technical though there some rappel slings toward the top were there was a lot of exposure. There was a fair amount of loose talus and one needs to be careful of rockfall in the gullies and on some of the traversing. The views of Eldorado and surrounding peaks from the summit are excellent making dealing with the loose rock and talus worth the climb.