Ruth Gorge, Various Ascents. Drew Spaulding, Calvin Hebert and I arrived on the Ruth Glacier on July 5. We planned to stay until early August. One of our goals was to climb Mt. Barille via one of the Cobra Pillar routes. We decided to warm up on the northeast face of Peak 6000 before heading down the Gorge to Barille. On July 6, we scouted the approach to the 900-foot wall and found a line about 400 feet left of the Brugger/DeKlerk route that looked undone and very good. We returned to the face on July 7. Two beautiful pitches of 5.10 and a bit of aid later we were at the base of a rotten comer blocked by a precariously detached flake. We climbed around it to the right via some scary, unprotected face climbing, which led back to the corner, which went at 5.9 A2. We fixed back to the base of the route from 400 feet and called it a day.

On July 10, after two days of marginal weather, we got one pitch higher in mist and rain. On July 14 we jugged our lines and finished the route, finding the upper terrain to be mostly fun 5.9 climbing before joining the last two pitches of the Brugger/DeKlerk route.

Calvin left on the 17th. Drew and I climbed a line on the Gargoyle Wall up a beautiful white granite crack system on which we found slings. The first four pitches had been done by a previous party. We finished the route—1800 feet of beautiful cracks—in 10 pitches with 60-meter ropes and descended via six 100-foot and seven long rappels. The complete route, New Mother Nature, is rated V 5.10+ Al. Despite short A1 sections no pins were used. The remainder of our trip was a storm-bound wait until our fly-out date.

Dave Medara, unaffiliated