In August, my friend got permits for Temple crag in the Sierras and we decided to go for Sun Ribbon Arete. Before heading up there, I thought I’d want to come back for Dark Star… but honestly, it sounded quite loose and I think I’m good for now.

I had just been dumped, and my mindset was shambolic. But I figured crying outside with friends was better than alone in the van, so I soldiered on. Don’t worry I told my climbing partner beforehand and he graciously gave me the crux… I guess it felt better having a “real” reason to cry.

The route appealed to my partner and I, not just for the aesthetic nature of the line, but also because it has a natural tyrolean traverse.

Third lake camping

The hike in was really nice, and there was water along the way for a lot of it. That was great because I really didn’t want to carry more extra weight.

After a little nudie dip to rinse off from the hike, we set up camp by third lake. I’d say that or second lake would be good places to camp. First lake would be a little extra commuting.

The route finding

We got started around 5am to give ourselves plenty of daylight, and were at the base of the route a little after sunrise. I am glad we started early becuase once we were on route I felt like we were moving slowly.

There were a couple of pitches with good crack climbing, but they were interspersed with crumbly scrambling, wandering pitches. It was still worth doing though. I took odds and we linked whatever we could. I do tend to lose track, but I figure we did it in around 16 pitches.

The route finding wasn’t as easy as I was expecting with it being an arete. I think that’s because the topos I found online were nearly useless on pitch lengths.

Both topos I downloaded were different and both sucked. Normally the more detailed a topo is, the more accurate I assume it is. But these must’ve been written from memory decades later. But I’m not going back to rewrite them now that I did the route – so I guess I don’t blame them.

Part of the adventure when I go alpine climbing is the route finding, and it was fun figuring it all out.

The tyrolean

It is always hard for me to tell altitude nausea from anxiety nausea. That day on Sun Ribbon was no different.

I was nervous for the tyrolean because I had never done one before. And I like to have something to cling to…! But it turned out completely fine. My partner lassoed the horn after a few attempts and rigged it up. We ended up belaying each other across as well because crossing air (with no rock to cling onto) is spooky as hell.

Looking back, I did a better job eating enough when I was getting tired. Plus I had forced down most of a dehydrated breakfast meal that morning.

My headspace for the send

I had just gotten dumped, but when we got to the base of the 10a pitch, it was my turn to lead. And instead of yeeting myself off the cliff because I was sad, I decided that the crux was a good distraction.

We went for the right variation and it had about 4 feet of actual rock climbing before easing up considerably. The shitty topo was accurate here in that it indicated 2 pitons close together at the start of the pitch. They were VERY (pointlessly) close, maybe less than 3 feet apart. The crux was very reasonable.

Some characters at the top

That day, there were parties on several routes. Sun Ribbon is right in the middle of everything, so we could look across either way and hear rockfall.

Our good friends were on Venusian Blind, a guided party was on Moon Goddess, and another party was on Dark Star. Most of the rockfall came from Dark Star and it was comically (terrifyingly) chaotic.

We heard so much rockfall that it felt like we were getting shot at. During the entire route, we pulled off ONE small rock. From the sound of it, Sun Ribbon must be the least chossy. Or maybe things just echo because Sun Ribbon is in the middle of everything else.

We listened to the Dark Star party having conflicts throughout the day and when we reached the top, we met that party. One of the guys was bragging that he had now done all the routes at Temple, and explaining to us where Mt. Sill was (he was, in fact, not pointing at Mt. Sill).

He was mansplaining to both me and my partner (a man), so I can’t chalk this one up to being a woman in the backcountry.

Going down

I am glad we had daylight for our descent. After the topout, we hiked down following cairns easily. Then we did the rappel, and hiked down the pass. Towards the bottom, as we got near the main trail, we ended up veering a bit left in the hallway (towards third lake) when we should’ve gone a bit right (towards second).

It was one of the more sketchy things I’ve ever done and looking back I would revise my decision making. I would have retreated to find a better way. Lots of big blocks were breaking loose upon weighting them…. and I did end up losing a #1 doing some questionable glissading. I lived and learned, gratefully. And luckily we still had daylight.

Our Venusian Blind friends were descending after nightfall, and they started radioing us for beta consistently because of how cryptic the descent was without light.

They kept waking me up, but there wasn’t much we could tell them since we didn’t have their location. My partner’s Rocky Talkie died conveniently when our friends started relying heavily on radioing us for beta LOL.

“Keep the big boulder to your right” doesn’t really help that much when I have no clue which big boulder they’re looking at.

It reminded me of the importance of having a Gaia map downloaded at the very least. And a bivy sack. There was some concern they might get benighted… and what a terrible place that would’ve been to hunker down (rockfall hazard). But they made it back around midnight.

Overall we spent ~15 hours camp to camp. That’s including a nice lunch lounge on route, some summit selfies, and a couple other leisurely rests at scenic spots.

The nice thing is that we had great views of the lakes and mountains the whole time. And there were some legendary ledges to chill on 🙂 A good time with my homie.