The Not So Dawn Arete

September 15, 2019.

Howard at sunrise

(Written by Dylan)
I departed Logan around 9pm, full from a big dinner and with a solid handful of dark hours to drive to meet Dad at the Garden Creek CG. We recalled staying here during the Rosencrance IdahoSummits Outing in 2013 and it seemed like an ideal place to meet for a trip up Wildhorse.

I only nearly hit one herd of elk on the drive up before rolling in around 1AM, stirring Dad. We talked briefly about start times in the morning, and settled on 7AM. I slept hard until the alarm and my bladder rousted me precisely at 7.

We didn't have a clear plan of where we wanted to go, but with the goal of a few pitches of roped climbing and maybe a summit of Howard peak guiding us, we figured to try to find the Dawn Arete. I had been up Mustang the week earlier, and I had a reasonably good idea of how to get there (or thought I did.) We decided to take the trail to the approach scree on the West face, and skirt around to the east above the trees but below the cliffs. This sort of worked, although we ended up dropping into the east fork of Wildhorse anyway. Sure, we had worked way harder than we needed to, but at least we were only behind schedule, right?

Now where is it?

Now in the drainage, the understanding that we really had no idea where we were going sunk in. Is this arete the Dawn? This one? That one? Should we go try to climb something on Howard? What if we try to climb what looks like could possibly be the Dawn but would still look fun? Let's do that.  We settled on a short, steeper arete that emptied into the steep headwall surrounding the rim of Mustang's East face. 

Picking a route, we went directly up the waterfall in the notch

Howard's East face (L), Mustang's East face (R)

Heading up. We climbed the right skyline (about)

Rockfall across the valley on Brocky

We found a slot/waterfall through the lower cliff bands at the base of the East face of Howard. A little  zigging and zagging brought us to our route. Gaining the arete looked a little steeper and smoother than we wanted to do unroped, so we broke out the cord and got going. A quick pitch of face with some interesting dihedral moves brought us to the arete proper. Fun climbing ahead!

A little roped climbing to gain the arete. I try to make my anchors look nice for the camera. And my mom. 

P2, the Offwidth on the arete

From here it was pretty obvious we were not of the Dawn Arete. Who cares, this looks sweet! Maybe we would care later.

The actual Dawn Arete

The climbing on the arete was some of the most fun and rewarding backpack-on alpine climbing I've done. Most notably, a fun 20' off width section that brought you to a small gendarme traverse, up to the goods. The Split Pillar. A glass smooth pillar about 18" wide and 30' long, entirely detached from the rest of the arete, but stuck in place with a good dose of Pioneer Magic. This was capped off by a fun roof to absolutely bomber hands.

P2, the Split Pillar

Looking back on the Split Pillar

After a lot of excited yelling and some light swearing, I pulled through the pillar and the roof to the absolute garbage above. Out of rope and nearly out of gear, I popped in an anchor at the lip of a nice ledge and brought Dad up. He took the next ledgy pitch, and belayed at the base of the headwall.

John following P2

P3, Pa's Pitch

Following P3

Here is where things got interesting. The rock is worse; mostly sand held together with lichen. With more lichen on top. All of the ledges are covered with gravel. There's an occasional tree. I decided to quest up the center of the face, hoping to piece together something fun and a little challenging, with the knowledge that we could always bail left if things got too "engaging." Things got too engaging. I groveled onto a ledge with a few small lodgepoles on them, hoping to cut left and get out of here. But, I was out of rope. I belayed Dad up and we settled in for the next part of the show, what he later dubbed "The Tightrope."

Some ledge action

Starting the Tightrope pitch (P5)

Mid-pitch

Looking back from the rim- Zoom in for some slung-horn action!

I gently moved out left to the end of the ledge, and started tiptoeing across small edges to the end of the face. My pack seemed to pull me out over the headwall, taunting me with nasty images of ledge falls and broken rock. I tested every piece of rock I touched, waiting for something to break in my hands. No holds broke on this pitch, but if they had it wouldn't have been pretty. I climbed a good 40' off of the ledge, and finally found some rock good enough for some pro. I slammed in a yellow totem and immediately slung a solid horn after, feeling miles better. The rest of the pitch flew by. I pulled onto the ridge and into the sun, quickly wrapped the rope around some boulders, and brought Dad up.  An exciting pitch!

Excited!

Finally done, we considered the potential for this to be a new route. Was anyone misdirected enough to climb this house-of-cards chosspile? We should find out.

We left Howard for another day and headed down without incident.

Trail Creek East

We motored down the road and out to Amy Lou's, with plenty of time to spare for burgers before another long night drive.