Cutthroat Peak (South Buttress) – July 17, 2009

With hot weekend weather forecasted, I decided to aim for shorter climbing adventures without the drudgery of carrying a heavy pack. With that in mind, I hooked up with Jim Lapp to revisit the South Buttress of Cutthroat Peak. For those who haven’t climbed this route, it is a highly enjoyable moderate multi-pitch climb (low 5th class with a few 5.7-ish moves) with climbing that almost makes you forget about the punishing sufferfest you must endure on the approach.
Leaving Jim’s truck on SR 20 at 7:45 a.m., we grinded our way up the hill towards the base of the peak. It was already blistering hot and the bugs were undeterred by the misting of DEET, yet we enjoyed the spectacular mountain views and the wildflowers as we ascended through the upper meadows. Given the loss of blood and sweat and the anticipated heat/drought ahead of us, we tanked up with snowmelt and headed into the uppermost/climber’s left gully, leaving our boots, some water and a few non-essentials behind.
Although rock fall in the approach gully is a reality, we made our way to the ridge without bodily harm and belayed a short pitch to the ridge crest. Scrambling to the buttress, we then swapped leads for the first 3 or 4 pitches in good time. At this point, we briefly got off-route from the “flat belay ledge” where route descriptions/pictures suggest you should start trending left towards the sandy notch between the two summits. I’m sure this is an option, but I’ve always entered the notch up high via the famous “Tarzan jump” and I didn’t like the look of the gully leading to the notch. So, we instead traversed right, regaining the route, and in two pitches (just below the steep white upper wall), we each “Tarzanned” our way into the notch. A quick walk up took us to the next pitch, which involves dropping 10’ down into another notch between here and the summit. This was followed by a committing move or two up and over the next feature, down climbing, then up to the final 10’ off-width crack to the summit. I’d had a scary rope-drag related experience leading this once before, so opted to belay Jim over. Given the option, he “manned up” and lead the crack and scrambled to the summit.
Having depleted my water (dehydration headache setting in) and with lots of rappelling ahead of us, we briefly enjoyed the summit and commence to down climb/rappel the route. The 10-ish single rope raps were solid and uneventful (i.e. no stuck ropes). We had to establish one new rap anchor, however there were several places where I wish I had more tat to reinforce the manky webbing at existing anchors.
Unbelievably, we encountered no other climbing parties (not my experience in the past). Except for loose rock in the gully, we found the route to be mostly solid and were thankful for all the webbing along the way, which confirmed that we were on the route. Anyone who has climbed this route can attest to the fact that there are lots of options and you can’t get too far astray given the ubiquitous rap stations. Numerous trees along the way saves time since you don’t need to construct belay/rappel anchors. While we suffered a little, we enjoyed each others’ company, the scenery and challenge of climbing and route finding on such a spectacular day.
SUMMARY: Total elevation to summit – approx. 3,000’ in about 1.5 miles. Total travel time 11 hrs. Currently there is water available before entering the gully, but not on the route.
GEAR: Standard rack (nuts & cams) + #4 Camalot to protect final off-width crack pitch, single 60m rope. Extra webbing to reinforce (better yet – replace) at rap stations.