Raven Ridge – 8,500+ft
Katie on the summit
Eric and Katie
November 6, 2016
We drove out east Saturday evening in the pouring rain and slept at the Libby Creek trailhead. Matthew and I had visited this area in February, but the road to the trailhead wasn’t plowed and we’d had to hike in 10 miles just to reach the trail. We’d continued on to climb Hoodoo Peak, but didn’t have time to tag Raven Ridge nearby. I hoped this time to return and hit Raven Ridge.
On Sunday morning the skies were clear and we started hiking up the trail. After a few miles we hit snowline around 6,000ft and changed into our hardcore mountaineering boots. We took a short break at the cabin, then switched to snowshoes to hike up to Libby Lake.
From the southwest corner of the lake we climbed up the steep snow gully to gain the ridge, then scrambled East along the ridge for a half mile on tricky partially-snow-covered talus. After crawling through a small boulder tunnel we reached the summit around 2pm, ahead of schedule. The summit was extremely exposed to the north, but a tame slope to the south.
The descent was much faster in the snowy gully, and we reached the car around 6:30pm.
© 2016, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.
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