Attempted Kyes peak with a friend. We camped at Virgin Lake on Saturday night so that we don't need to have a long day with 17miles round trip. There are excellent camping sites with some big one could even hold 4-6 tents just above virgin lake. We started to climb the ridge around 8am. The first section was fine on the top of the ridge, then we had to traverse on the east side of the ridge to pass some cliff bands, routefinding was tricky at some spots.
After that, we passed a good section that some people called "pleasant ridge". The trail was obvious and the view opened up on the east side. Before we enjoyed the view for long, the bootpath dropped to the west side to bypass the point 5845 by passing couple talus fields. Then returned to the thick forest and blueberry bushes. The routefinding became a nightmare, we had to use both hands to do tree/veggie belaying to pass the steep slopes. The bootpath was faint and disappeared from time to time. Multiple animal trails made it hard to see which one was the correct one. The recent snow recovered some fields and made it even worse.
After traversed over the west side of the point 5845, we reached a saddle. Then we climbed up another ridge to gain the boulder fields above the treeline. The routefinding was as bad as the previous section.
Once we broke out of the treeline, we had a great view of the summit ridge with the famous "shark fin" and the false summit. There was no boothpath in the boulder and talus fields, just aimed toward the pass right in front of the shark fin. When we reached the pass, it was already 2pm. Even the summit wasn't far away with only additional 200-300ft elevation gain, we had to turnaround because the terrain was too dangerous to hike out in darkness.
It turned out that we made a wise decision and the routefinding was as challenging as we ascended due to the steep terrains and thick bushes and trees. Fortunately, we made back to Virgin lake just when it became dark.
The route turned out to be more challenging than what we expected. If you want to try this route, please make sure that you have enough daylight, late season seems to be not a good choice. You also need to have very good routefinding skills and excellent mental endurance. There was couple small ponds close to the summit ridge and there are also permanent snow fields. You may could find some good Bivy sites in that area.
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