Bessemer Mountain — Thursday, Mar. 22, 2001

Getting There: Drive up the Middle Fork Road and begin walking up the S. Bessemer Rd. at about 880'. The Trail: I have heard of most of my buddies having climbed Bessemer Mtn., and just today I read Mike Collins report of climbing the Mountain this past Sept. This was to be my first attempt and I did it in a completely different fashion than the way Mike did it, so I'll tell you how I did it... A buddy from work (Johnathon) and I set out around 9:00 am making our way up towards S. Bessemer, at ~4,500' just SE of S. Bessemer (5,028'). At this elevation there is a spur road that takes off to the right. Follow this road until it dead ends at ~4,600' (on the east side of S. Bessemer), from here you need to traverse due north (dropping a bit) to intersect the main east ridge of Middle Bessemer at ~4,400'(there is only one place to cross this spur ridge!). After crossing the ridge we donned ice axes and dropped (always heading due north)a couple hundered feet to ~4,200 feet. In front of you are a couple of steepish snow gullies (we took the furthest one north) before ascending due west to hit the summit ridge (about 800' of climbing). Once on the ridge we could now see the summit to our right. Donning ropes we traversed about 150' along an exposed narrow section of ridge making it to the notch below the summit (half of which was in open snow and the last bit weaving in between trees). The final section from here was around one big rock to the right, and then up a short section of class 3 rock and the final move being one exposed move around to the right (there is a nice big short overhanging crack in the middle of the face that was climbed by Johnathon on top rope after we summited), once around this last move it is an easy walk to the true summit a few feet away. Our buddies who had been up there earlier in the season had left a great rappel anchor with which to get off the summit. The weather was incredible and Johnathon led the two pitches of rock climbing. We were up there for a gorgeous sunset and then descended the steep snow gully in the waning moments of light. Once at the bottom of this gully it was completely dark so at this point we donned head lamps for the snow slog out (and I do mean a slog!!, the snow was heavy, soft and wet all day). We arrived back at the cars around 11:00 pm. Johnathon had a plane to catch early the next morning to go and climb Orizabo(a)' down in Mexico and he still had some packing to do, ouch!!! See ya on the trail!! Pilar