The following day we got up early, knowing it would be our big push day, and set off through the valley just after sunrise. There were tons of amazing wildflowers everywhere as we traversed rocky benches through the valley towards Mount Land. We eventually reached a marshy meadow at the end of Ault Lake where we boulder hopped over streams and pretty pink fireweed towards a steep slope leading up to the ridgeline.

The slope (as always) looked steeper from afar, and we quickly made our way up the orange sandy hill to the ridgeline, staying close to a small stream with rocks for traction. Once on the col East of Mount Land, it was clear that we’d just be hiking upwards for awhile to the start of the route. 

As we neared the summit, the angle began to kick up more and more, and we made some 3rd class, then 4th and low 5th scrambling moves up to the first of two large pinnacles. We initially thought we could traverse around the south side of this pinnacle to the start of the route, but as we continued upwards we realized there was a massive steep gully, banked by large cliffs. We instead traversed back to the middle of the pinnacle and climbed directly up and over it to a little ledge just above the small col.

The second pinnacle is where the climbing route begins, and we flaked out two full length ropes to maximize our pitch length. I don’t normally like to carry two, but it was convenient with our party of 3 to be able to make full length pitches and have both followers on their own rope. It was soon clear that this setup was mandatory, because I made one full length pitch to the top of the pinnacle with only a couple meters to spare. The climbing was easy but with sparse protection, so an anchor halfway up would have been very challenging.

From the top of the pinnacle, the exposure was pretty wild in every direction, with steep gullies running way down to valley bottom. We made a single fun rappel to the bottom of the second notch, and were thankful that the ropes pulled cleanly as it would have been a difficult or impossible rock face to go back up.

From this notch, I led a second full length pitch to a nice ledge. The climbing in this section was excellent with a fun chimney, some stemming, and an easy crack system on a smooth face. I thought there would be some scrambling and downclimbing after this, but the spot that was marked as a downclimb looked better as a rappel to me, so we left some more webbing to get down to a sandy ledge below the summit. In hindsight, it could have maybe been downclimbed, but it would have been needlessly spicy and the rappel was only 10m at most so didn’t take us too long.

From the sandy ledge, I led a low angle pitch to a large bench below the summit. Ropes maybe wouldn’t have been necessary for this one, but it was really slippery in rock shoes with all the sand on top of slabs, so in the end I was happy to make it the final pitch. We could see where previous parties had gone up some stellar looking cracks, but we were a little worried about timing, and our group’s stress levels were rather high for the day so it made more sense for us to take the easy scramble route around the south side of the summit.

The final scramble was pretty fun, with very large rocky ledges interspersed with short and fun boulder problems. A few short 4th class moves brought us to the summit itself, where we finally stopped for a rest and a snack break. The views were equally scenic as the ones from Mount Sloan, though our slightly lower elevation meant we couldn’t see quite as far in any direction.