Yanni vs John Tesh, I can't think of many better locations for this clash of icons than the East Ridge of Ingalls North Peak. I'm torn, but push comes to shove, I think my vote is for John Tesh. Though not as common as the pee chasing goats, if you keep your eyes open, maybe you'll have a gander at these creatures in their natural environment. In the wild, John Tesh is a little more shy, his last sighting being on the lesser traveled East Ridge of East Peak while Yanni was seen at Ingalls Pass. A special thanks to both for making this trip to Ingalls so enjoyable.


John Tesh                                                            Yanni

Drive:
Take exit 85 off of I-90 (close to Cle Elum) and drive west (signs may say north) on Hwy 970 for ~7 miles. Make a left on Teanaway Rd and continue for ~23 miles. Make sure you do not cross over the North Teanaway River Fork, but you will follow it for quite some time (you will cross over Beverly Creek). Continue on the main road, avoiding the left fork (Spur Rd 112) that ends at the Beverly Turnpike trailhead, to the Esmeralda trailhead (Ingalls Lake Trail) parking lot.

Approach:
We started hiking up the Esmeralda trail around 6:45am for ~0.3 miles. We made a right on Ingalls Way Trail (trail 1390), continuing for ~1.3 miles to Longs Pass trail and where we took the left fork onto Lake Ingalls trail. Ingalls Pass is another ~3 miles. We were at Ingalls Pass at 8:15am and took a short 10 min break, making good time, where we chose the lower of the two trail options (the lower trail passes through the meadow and some trees, and the upper trail skirts along the hillsides, losing less elevation, though the upper trail seems excessively long). We reached Ingalls lake in goo time around 9ish, where we watched some goats and refilled our water.

Our Climb:



Blue: our partial ascent of E Ridge of E Peak
Green: our descent of Dike Chimney
Red: our ascent of E Ridge of North Peak
Orange: our quick descent of S Ridge of North Peak

Bottom of Dike Chimney

We headed around the west side of the lake, venturing up towards Dike Chimney, an obvious chimney/gully on the east side of East Peak. We headed up to higher ground and then went east of Dike Chimney, choosing a nice class 3/4 route to gain the East Ridge of East Peak, popping over for a short glimpse of John Tesh.

After exploring our options, we headed to the most likely and easiest ascent w/o snow to reach the top of Dike Chimney. This was pretty close to the skyline, where we roped up for a short 40 ft section of OK rock that seemed to be slightly crumbly right where you needed a solid foot placement. Climbing shoes would have made this much more enjoyable, but it is only slightly uncomfortable in boots due to solid footholds being somewhat small.


Short roped section on bottom of E Ridge, E Peak           Upper Dike Chimney                   

Near the top of Dike Chimney, the route shown in the dotted green line, we scoped out the remainder of the East Ridge of East Peak, and after a long time of not seeing a clear route that was obviously protectable, we decided to bail on what could be an arduous task of route finding and head to the Select Climb: the East Ridge of North Peak. The view from the top of Dike Chimney is discouraging considering that the skyline of East Ridge, East Peak looks like a mild climb. It is highly possible that our view was from the north side of the ridge line and the route likely heads up the south side of the ridge line. East Peaks north side appears to be considerably steeper than its south side.

We carefully made our way down the upper rubble pile of Dike Chimney and set up a rappel from the edge of the rubble. The lower left section of Dike Chimney is a cool white rock broken-slab with steep 8 ft wide walls that funnel any rock fall from above. We took turns rapping the route and down-climbing the remainder of the bottom Chimney before the next person started down.

After a 20ft tricky "moating" section of stemming between snow and slab (I found I need to practice my "moating" skills), we could descend easy ground nearly back to the lake before heading back up hill to reach the gully that heads towards the notch and keyhole that lies between North and East Peak of Ingalls.


Our ascent of East Ridge of North Peak to the best of my recollection
Green: Class 3 and below
Orange: Class 4
Red: Class 5

Keyhole with path to ridge line

There was a couple above us in the gully, so we headed up a class 4 cutoff to a scree filled ramp, and then switched back up more enjoyable class 3 and 4 scrambling to just below the keyhole. Here we roped up and dawned climbing shoes. A short 40 ft pitch brought us to the ridge proper, where due to previous difficulties simul-climbing with a team of 3 and one 60m rope, we split up the ridge into ~100ft pitches. Our 3 person party and short pitches made this more of a social gathering, making it very enjoyable, even if the 1 rope stretched our time on the climbing route to ~4 hours.


Bypassing 1st gendarme on right               20ft class 4-5.0 down-climb

After passing the immediate gendarme (1st one on ridge) on the right, we down-climbed an airy and easier than it appears class 4-5.0 corner system (orange line on ridge), that does not have significant exposure even though it appears to from the top. The climbing between here and the hand traverse blurred together, in a nice blend of easy, enjoyable, and fairly solid rock that wasn't excessively exposed, but had some exposure broken up by easier, unexposed ground.


Easy 20 ft hand traverse

The hand traverse is not steep, has decent feet, and very good hands.


Crux of the climb
Green: Summitpost's suggested route
Red: our intended route
Orange: the branch we took and the road that probably shouldn't be traveled

50ft later, we made a short exposed 10 ft traverse and step over a slightly airy 40 ft drop and bypassed gendarmes and subpeaks on the right to reduce the number of pitches until we were at the base of the crux, a short section of many cracks that lead over the final obstacle before a quick traverse to North Peak proper. Confused about some form of beta implying taking the middle crack, we aimed our sights on the red line, but ended up branching off to the orange line. Apparently a #3 does not suffice for protection in our intended route (a #4 would have worked, a 3.5 might have worked) and it was too awkward with a pack for me to force it. We branched off to the orange line with its nice eery weird sound from a tap, but it did provide some form of protection. I would not suggest this way because after much tapping, it sounded like a 4ft diameter chunk of rock might eventually break free. From my interpretation of our beta, I ignored the left-most crack, but it looks like an easier and less awkward way and it is what summitpost.org suggests. The suggested #3.5 to protect this section might also fit.

A short jaunt over and around the right of a subpeak or two brought us to the summit and a quick hike to the upper rappel of the South Ridge. Two 30m rappels brought us to the base of the face found on the South Ridge, where if you head to climber's right on the latter, you can nearly reach walking ground. Another 30m rappel brought us down some blocky terrain to one more 30m rappel. We down-climbed, made our way down the talus field, and headed down the slabs, heading back to the car at a fast pace. It was approximately 7:30 when we were near the lake and we got back to the car a little after 9pm for a long but enjoyable day.