Fish Fork
Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2023 3:58 pm
Not that long ago I would do big trips through the mountains. In the last year or two I mostly switched to trip-report-inappropriate mountain activities, and temporarily put big days aside. But plenty of areas remain unexplored, and I just went back this past weekend to do a thing. Things feel very different now 
The plan was to climb the North ridge of Iron Mt. This is remote and challenging, but decently well documented. And I haven't done it yet. Various previous reports:
- https://www.summitpost.org/north-ridge/297109
- https://www.trvrsoutdoors.com/blogs/tra ... orth-ridge
- viewtopic.php?t=7636
- viewtopic.php?t=6469
- viewtopic.php?t=1635
- viewtopic.php?t=7816
I've been eyeing this ridge on multiple previous trips:
Fish Fork is the big drainage on the left of the photo. The ridge is to the right of that.
Alright. So I was pretty sure I wasn't strong enough at the moment to do the whole loop in a day (smart!), so I planned to hike up in the afternoon to the mouth of Fish Fork, sleep at fish fork camp, and do the climb the following day. I did that, arriving just as the sun set at ~ 5PM. A bit over 3 hours from parking to Fish Fork Camp. There's a lot of water in the river, and it was nice to see it so healthy at this point in the season. Made travel wet and slow, though. The usual logs and rock crossings below the bridge are all gone, and you're walking in the river a lot. And that all goes without saying above the bridge.
To everybody's shock, there were 3 hikers camped at fish fork camp when I got there. They were doing a 3-day one-way traverse of the East Fork. It was nice to chat with them before I went to bed. The plan was to get up early, and to start walking as early as sunlight would allow. It turns out that my sleeping pad leaks, so it wasn't the most comfortable night, but I was off at 6:30AM.
The route goes into Fish Fork, then turns right into South Fork Fish Fork. At some point you turn right to climb up the ridge. Somewhere here: https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=34.3032 ... o=f16a&n=1
The recommended route was to climb the prominent gully at 4100ft. headsizeburrito picked up the ridge earlier, and _kicks_rocks_ even earlier than that. None of them seemed excited about their choice, so I planned to take the gully.
Fish Fork is wild. The going was slow in the main branch of the East Fork, but slowed down significantly in Fish Fork. You are CONSTANTLY climbing over rocks or trees or brush. Nobody goes over there.
I think it took me over 2 hours to make it to the gully. It didn't look like anything, and I actually walked by it, and had to backtrack. You know it's the right spot when you look up, and see a gap:
Here I even found some miner trash, which I haven't seen for miles at this point:
I can't imagine it's worth the effort for them to go way over here. The gully doesn't look all that great at the bottom:
I climbed that mossy wall, and it was medium-open for a bit
Then there's a much bigger mossy wall:
To either side are steep walls of terrible rock and lots of brush. It's all passable, but sketchy. I walked around for a bit, looking for a line I'd feel comfortable going up AND down, if need be. There wasn't one. I was doing well on time, and felt fine. But making sketchy, committing moves in the middle of absolutely nowhere all by myself wasn't something I was excited about, so I decided to abort. So I completed the approach and a tiny bit of the climb, but the approach was something like 10 miles of ROUGH terrain. Mad respect to those that did this all in one go. I'm not sure if I lost some of the mentality that made this feel OK before. This one might just be tougher than the other routes I've done solo. I'm going to climb the SW ridge of Iron Mt in the near future to see. I've done that one before, and it felt long, but relatively straightforward.
So I went back the way I came, going slow, stopping to smell the roses, and hauling out quite a bit of garbage. There're lots of mushrooms in Fish Fork, some growing in unexpected places
I finally saw the outflow of Falls Gulch
And Clark Gulch
And found more mine stuff
And some of the local critters
Not happy about the quitting, but maybe that just means I need to get stronger.
The plan was to climb the North ridge of Iron Mt. This is remote and challenging, but decently well documented. And I haven't done it yet. Various previous reports:
- https://www.summitpost.org/north-ridge/297109
- https://www.trvrsoutdoors.com/blogs/tra ... orth-ridge
- viewtopic.php?t=7636
- viewtopic.php?t=6469
- viewtopic.php?t=1635
- viewtopic.php?t=7816
I've been eyeing this ridge on multiple previous trips:
Fish Fork is the big drainage on the left of the photo. The ridge is to the right of that.
Alright. So I was pretty sure I wasn't strong enough at the moment to do the whole loop in a day (smart!), so I planned to hike up in the afternoon to the mouth of Fish Fork, sleep at fish fork camp, and do the climb the following day. I did that, arriving just as the sun set at ~ 5PM. A bit over 3 hours from parking to Fish Fork Camp. There's a lot of water in the river, and it was nice to see it so healthy at this point in the season. Made travel wet and slow, though. The usual logs and rock crossings below the bridge are all gone, and you're walking in the river a lot. And that all goes without saying above the bridge.
To everybody's shock, there were 3 hikers camped at fish fork camp when I got there. They were doing a 3-day one-way traverse of the East Fork. It was nice to chat with them before I went to bed. The plan was to get up early, and to start walking as early as sunlight would allow. It turns out that my sleeping pad leaks, so it wasn't the most comfortable night, but I was off at 6:30AM.
The route goes into Fish Fork, then turns right into South Fork Fish Fork. At some point you turn right to climb up the ridge. Somewhere here: https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=34.3032 ... o=f16a&n=1
The recommended route was to climb the prominent gully at 4100ft. headsizeburrito picked up the ridge earlier, and _kicks_rocks_ even earlier than that. None of them seemed excited about their choice, so I planned to take the gully.
Fish Fork is wild. The going was slow in the main branch of the East Fork, but slowed down significantly in Fish Fork. You are CONSTANTLY climbing over rocks or trees or brush. Nobody goes over there.
I think it took me over 2 hours to make it to the gully. It didn't look like anything, and I actually walked by it, and had to backtrack. You know it's the right spot when you look up, and see a gap:
Here I even found some miner trash, which I haven't seen for miles at this point:
I can't imagine it's worth the effort for them to go way over here. The gully doesn't look all that great at the bottom:
I climbed that mossy wall, and it was medium-open for a bit
Then there's a much bigger mossy wall:
To either side are steep walls of terrible rock and lots of brush. It's all passable, but sketchy. I walked around for a bit, looking for a line I'd feel comfortable going up AND down, if need be. There wasn't one. I was doing well on time, and felt fine. But making sketchy, committing moves in the middle of absolutely nowhere all by myself wasn't something I was excited about, so I decided to abort. So I completed the approach and a tiny bit of the climb, but the approach was something like 10 miles of ROUGH terrain. Mad respect to those that did this all in one go. I'm not sure if I lost some of the mentality that made this feel OK before. This one might just be tougher than the other routes I've done solo. I'm going to climb the SW ridge of Iron Mt in the near future to see. I've done that one before, and it felt long, but relatively straightforward.
So I went back the way I came, going slow, stopping to smell the roses, and hauling out quite a bit of garbage. There're lots of mushrooms in Fish Fork, some growing in unexpected places
I finally saw the outflow of Falls Gulch
And Clark Gulch
And found more mine stuff
And some of the local critters
Not happy about the quitting, but maybe that just means I need to get stronger.