Trip Report

The first evening in Summer Camp, I mentioned that while there at the 1967 camp, I had gone into the crater of Broken Top, and then climbed up to the rim without any great difficulty. I wondered how difficult it would be to do a complete climb by this route. A couple of others were also interested, and I was asked to lead such a climb.

Wednesday, after breakfast was over and lunches were made, we drove to the end of the Crater Ditch Road, and started hiking at 10:15 a.m. An hour later we were in the crater. As we were without crampons, and only had about three ice axes, we took a gradual course on the snow to the rocks below the lowest notches in the rim. Steve and Bob went up a gully to one notch, while the other five of us took another. I found the going much tougher than 14 years earlier. We were roped much of the way and often moving only one at a time. It was nearly vertical with some loose rock. After reaching the rim we angled up and around toward the normal NW ridge, reaching it a little below the summit. We were on the summit at 2:00.

After descending a short way, we went out on the steep west scree slope, and went most of the way down it before traversing around to the SW ridge. Some of us would have been better off to have descended to the bottom of the steep scree, then go across the flatter areas to reach the SW ridge. We regrouped at the ridge, then headed down to the Crater Ditch-Green Lakes Trail, following it out to the road. We returned to Todd Lake and camp about 6:00 p.m. in time for another of Selma's delicious dinners.

For some of our group it was a tough initiation to climbing on their first mountain. Climbers were Dick and Pat Matters, Dick and Bob Moffitt, Steve McManigal, John Powell, and leader Norm Benton.