6.3
...continued from Day 3 ...
So, I got up early as climbed a different route to Thunderbird's other summit (slightly more direct although with a bit of a pucker factor on the final ridge to the other summit). When I got to the cairn it was obvious that this summit also had a register. My intentions then turned to climbing the ridge over to the other summit and taking apart the other cairn so that no one else made the same mistake I did ... those were my intentions until I read the comments in the register! It was absolutely hysterical! It was like a time lapsed argument (held over a decade) as to where the true summit was located (on the peak that I climbed today or on the one I climbed yesterday) with people commenting whether or not the register should or should not be moved back to the other peak (one person even accused someone of "bad math" for putting the register on this peak). Needless to say, I felt pretty relieved that I could have thought that the other peak was the summit (and maybe it is!). I included photos of the summit register (two pages) and definitely did not go back to the other summit cairn.
Now what about my GPS check on my fist summit attempt. Well, my GPS did not lie! At home I used the 2000 version of the Chugach State Park map when I was putting in my GPS locations and the 2000 map shows the summit clearly as the one I climbed the previous day!! I brought with me in the field the newer map but have the older one sitting by the computer. I can honestly laught about it all now. It is a pretty funny set of events that led me to climb both Thunderbird Peaks on different days using information from different maps and different sources (cairns and GPS versus registers). It really brings to light some interesting notions about summiting.
After returning to camp (I was back before 10am), I made a quick lunch and then broke camp and headed out. I went to High Pass via a discontinuous ridge that began very close to where I camped (instead of using the valley that leads to High Pass, which was a ways downstream). I am not sure I made up any time by climbing but I was able to hit another high point on the way: Peak 5320.
Then is was a straight shot back to the car and Pizza Man.
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August and I on Thunderbird's other/true? summit
