-Climbing Mt Jefferson- We had a great time climbing Mt Jefferson's Jefferson Park Glacier route. The glacier was awesome. Made it past the bergshchrund at the base of the Mohler Tooth and had a lot of fun on the knife edge ridge. Too bad we hadn't gotten up a little earlier and spent a little less time belaying each other across the knife edge ridge to make it up the summit pinnacle and make it down at a reasonable time which forced us to make a bivy at 9,000 feet. The full moon was awesome and we had plenty of food. Not a big deal. Just a great way to have a bivy under perfect circumstances. The summit pinnacle can wait. All the more reason to go up this beautiful mountain again.

Mt. Jefferson. As you get closer to the mountain the views get better. They are inspiring for the mountaineer who hopes for the top of the mountain.

Jefferson Park Jefferson park is beautiful, but hardly the wilderness experience. There are trails crisscrossing everywhere. Not much wilderness solitude here. But if you are going to climb Mt Jefferson you will probably need to start here.

Jefferson Park Glacier. This is one of the first pictures I was able to take during the daylight hours of our climb. We had an early morning start under the light of a glaring full moon. The crevasses in the center of the glacier looked bad so we skirted around to the left to escape the worst

The Mohler Tooth. This is where we made it across the bergschrund on the Jefferson Park Glacier. It didn't look as easy anywhere else so we did a little mixed rock climbing with our crampons on across the base of the rock to make the leap.

The upper headwall above the bergschrund. The climbing was steep up here but fun as long as you kept heading on up to the knife edge ridge.

At the start of the knife edge ridge. Here we are heading out at the start of the knife edge ridge. The ridge is a knife edge varying in width at the top from 1 foot to 4 feet. The exposure on both sides keeps your heart thumping. Quite a rush!

Across the top. Don't look down! Climbing along the knife edge ridge. You can drape the rope in a crack and hope it will stay on if you fall. There were pretty good rocks to drape webbing slings over to provide anchors.

Along the knife edge. Moving back up to the top of the knife edge. The rock was great and provided some fun bouldering.

Looking back at the knife edge ridge. You can see the exposure on both sides of the ridge.

The summit ridge and summit pinacle. Probably my favorite photo of the trip. Beautiful day. Beautiful place.

Working our way across the summit ridge. We are heading for the left side of the next pinacle to traverse around onto the east face The cornice on the ridge let loose about an hour later with a huge avalanche.

This is me. Here I am having a great time.

The ugly east face. Are we supposed to be here? Yes, I think we are supposed to be here but it was some of the ugliest climbing of the climb. Loose crappy stuff which made for some slow going.

Rappeling down. Down into the bottomless void. We ended up doing 5 rappels down a crumbly gulley. This option looked a lot less difficult and quicker than traversing across the 70 degree traverse below the summit pinacle and then having to wind our way through the crevasse fields of the Whitewater Glacier which we had never seen.

The morning after. Looking up the way we came down. We came down just to the left of the grey snow on these 65 to 70 degree snowfields. Great snow though and no problems. It got dark so we decided to hang out here where we are now and play it safe. In the morning we noticed that we had been heading for some crevasses we may not have seen.

The avalanche that came off the east face. Working our way across the Whitewater Glacier toward camp.

Return to Mountaineering Page