Poster Peak - Blue's Buttress

 

Description:  It had been over a year since my last climb and I was itching for a romp in the alpine. In the meantime I had a baby and sustained a serious ankle injury/surgery.  So finding something that was new, relatively short day, but a long section of rock was a bit tricky.  Luckily Blue's Buttress fit perfectly.

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Approach: 

From the hairpin you follow the valley towards kangaroo pass for about 1/2 mile.  On the right you'll see a drainage coming from Poster Peak that is also the exit from the birthday tour.  Follow that up towards the obvious roof.  The route starts just uphill from the roof.   It took us just over 1 hr on the ascent. 

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Route: We simul climbed the whole route, broken up into 3 pitches.  The only section we stopped to belay was my lead the 5" corner system crux- since I lacked confidence after my hiatus and broken ankle, but Gabe simul climbed it after me.  Each of the three section had 1 technical crux which lasted only about 5-15', with all of them staying in the 5.5-5.7 range.  But we rarely pulled out the beta since its easy to follow the path of least resistance.  At times the rock is questionable, so tread lightly, but we were always able to find solid rock. In this style we did the climb in 2 hours.

 

We did it in mid September so the descent is fairly obvious as you go up and over the summit and then hike down the sandy slopes to the saddle and down the scree back to the base of the climb.  It was more pleasant than it looked at first glance with some good plunge stepping and standing glissading through the scree. 

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