North America, United States, Wyoming—Wind River Range, Shark's Nose, Southwest Face

Publication Year: 1961.

Shark’s Nose, Southwest Face. The longest face on Shark’s Nose, one of the most striking summits in the southern portion of the Wind River Range, is the west and southwest, which presents a very impressive wall from the cirque of Shadow Lake. While traversing the range at the end of July, Yvon Chouinard, Ken Weeks, and I had little difficulty in deciding that this would be our first climb in the area. After a reconnaissance and a successful evening of fishing, we bestirred ourselves early and climbed to the lower right skyline as seen from the lake. The crack systems worked directly upward, and we climbed unroped for several hundred feet. The climbing was steep, but the rock was excellent granite and had many holds and laybacks. Eventually we traversed left of the central corner and then went up some layback cracks that were strenuous. A long, difficult pitch led up a wall on the right. The climb continued steeply upward, then worked left to some small fissures where the climbing again became very thin, but always just possible without direct aid. In four more leads we reached the summit notch about 150 feet south of the top and traversed along the crest. The total climb had involved about 1500 feet.

Fred Beckey