Kyes peak

Trip Title: Kyes Peak Author lee coutermarsh Date June 28, 2003 Days 1 Rating Great Difficulty Gruntable GuideBook green beckey Weather sunny and hot TrailConditions Owned By climbing RowId 176 Mountain Elevation Summitted kyes peak 7227 true Report I had never climbed anything in the monte cristo rage before and figured Kyes would be a decent objective. Nolan and I hooked up on Saturday for the south ridge rte. What an awesome day for a climb with excellent visibility. Found out quickly though it was a tad hot as Nolan led a blistering pace up the well maintained trail to Blanca lake. The pass is where we loaded up on water at a little slush pond called virgin lake. Good thing as water was hard to come by all the way to the summit. From virgin lake find a small tree with a blaze on it and a climbers path leading up the ridge. The path is easy to follow up to a point on the ridge and I believe labeled 5,800. From here there are 2 choices go up and over or drop down the left side and traverse around, which is what we did. Once around you come to a deep notch (obvious) and drop down the left side once again and eventually break out onto the snowfield. The false summit is within site now and just heading towards it we found a break in the cliffs to get through. The summit block is interesting rock and kinda grainy and almost like concrete. A class 2 scramble up and then right on ledges puts you on the summit. There is a register on the summit and been there since 1997. For some reason this peak isn't climbed that much. Outstanding views of Baker to Adams with Glacier peak dominating the sky to the east. The way down we were going to take a different approach and try to get out of the bushwhacking we encountered. It looked easy enough to just glissade all the way down to the valley floor and hike out around beautiful blanca lake to hook up with the main trail. WRONG! we got cliffed out and had to hike all the way back up to get back on the ridge and all the bushwhacking once again. This cost us allot of time and effort to make it long day. Finally got back to the car and about 12 hours on the trail. This is a long day and about 12 miles or so and about 6,000 ft elevation gain including our mistake.