ChoteauCam Trip to Harrison Valley
and an unsuccessful attempt at a new route on Walton Mountain
Part 2: August 16-17, 2007; Click to visit Part 1 or Part 3
Mountaineers: Ralph Thornton, Ron Gruber and April Carr
Copyright Notice

Our next goal was to move camp as high on Walton Mountain as possible. All we had to do was climb up 2,000 feet through scrub, trees, avalanche debris and cliffs. It didn't look too hard but looks can be deceiving.
The four photos below can only provide a hint of the "fun" we had.
Around 4 in the afternoon we encountered some flat rock ledges below some really difficult cliffs. We decided that we would not attempt those cliffs with our big packs. So we made camp a little short of our goal. This was one of the most durable surfaces for a camp: bare rock. Water was nearby and so was a perfect tree for hanging our food bags.
The next morning we climbed into the basin south of Walton Mountain hoping to use that approach to reach the summit. After climbing some difficult pitches above camp we got this view (above left) of our objective. It looked pretty daunting.

In the middle of the basin was a huge imposing cliff with several waterfalls cascading down them. We skirted these cliffs by climbing the ridge on the right. We climbed steep grassy ramps (above right) and a whole bunch of small cliffs (below).
We eventually reached the ridge separating the south basin of Walton Mountain from Harrison Glacier. The views were marred by forest fire smoke but they were impressive just the same.
Check out these crevasses!
Ron Gruber on the Southeast Ridge of Walton Mountain.
April Carr relaxing on the Southeast Ridge of Walton Mountain.
Above us there was another 1,000 feet of cliffs. We could see the summit of Walton Mountain and thought we saw two possible routes to the top.
We chose poorly.

We chose to climb near the center of the basin. There appeared to be a bunch of grassy areas separated by cliffs. We thought could climb them but we could not.
We climbed as high as possible but ran into cliffs we could not get up. There was another possible route closer to our previous resting place on the Southeast Ridge but it was a maze that would take some time to solve.
Since it was now getting late and none of us wanted to spend the night on the mountain high above our camp, with many feet of difficult cliffs between us and there, we decided to turn back.

While we didn't reach the summit we agreed that it was a good learning experience and we had a lot of fun!
The Rest of the Story:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3