Emperor Ridge

This historic route was nearly climbed in 1930 by Underhill and O'Brien before the successful 1961 ascent.

You would be crazy to get your information on this route from a website. This is a serious route that requires significant commitment. I'll share my story but the difficulty depends greatly on conditions and my experience may not be typical.

My full experience is at wiki.western.edu/mcis/index… - take this for what it's worth. The difficulty of this route depends greatly on the condition of the gargoyles - if the snow is in bad condition retreat is the only option.

Here's a few things to know:

The lower part of the route up to the Black Towers is mostly rock with small bits of ice to cross. We encountered climbing up to about 5.7 but most of it is much easier. There are few good anchors and plentiful loose rock. We stayed near the left side of the face. It's possibly to avoid some of the harder climbing by climbing on the lower angled terrain to the right.

We passed the Black Towers through a chimney on the left - this seemed fairly obvious. The only fixed gear we found on the route was a pin at the top of the chimney.

Once you attain the ridge proper you have to deal with a number of vertical steps and nearly a mile of often questionable snow gargoyles to reach the top. We passed most of the vertical steps on the right except for the final short one where a short trip to the Emperor face was required. Don't expect any solid anchors once you hit the gargoyles.