As much as we were enjoying our time on the summit in these beautiful conditions, It was soon time to think about heading down. The combination of a fairly late start and a fairly slow climbing speed meant that we were the last climbing party on the mountain, and it was well past 4pm at this point. The weather was still great and we still had plenty of light left before sundown, but even so, it was time to head down.
Down the upper scree slope
Descending 3rd cliff band
As you might expect, the journey back down went fairly quickly. The upper talus slopes were easily descended - especially by Jerome, who demonstrated his supervite® scree descent technique and was soon a tiny dot moving rapidly downslope.
The tan-colored rock of the third cliff band was easily downclimbed by all (I think Cassándra especially was starting to get the hang of this scrambling thing), and then after a bit more scree-path descent, we arrived once again at the crux - the climb of the second cliff band.
courtesy JInnes
Descending 3rd cliff band
Downclimbing 2nd Cliff Band
We dispensed with the cordalette this time, and instead simply ferried down a few packs from intermediate positions within the cliff band entirely by hand. Jerome and I downclimbed with packs (this is always good for practice, IMO).
Below the second cliff band, we carefully picked our way down the unpleasant loose gravel to the first cliff band (again I think if we had traversed a bit to the west before diagonally descending back, it might have been easier). Being scrambling experts now, the first cliff band was an easy hop or two of downclimbing. And that was it for the scrambling stuff - only 85 minutes from the summit down to this point.
courtesy JInnes
Descending from 2nd to 1st
courtesy JInnes
Below the second cliff band, we had a choice - either retrace our steps the way we had come up, along the official route from Sentinel Pass, or choose an alternate descent - one that descended open screen slopes in a huge bowl below the amphitheatre of cliffs between the southwest and south ridges.
Jerome was adamant about wanting to do the scree descent, and given his downhill speed on talus, I could see why. It represented a super-fast way for him to get back down onto the trail in Larch Valley.
In the end, we all decided to descend this alternate way. The park service doesn't recommend this route because the first part of it is directly in line with a gully that funnels any rockfall from climbers above. This is indeed a valid reason to discourage its use, but since we were clearly the last people on the mountain today, it was also clear that the risk to us would be quite low. So, down we went.
Traversing above cliff bands
Apart from a tumble incident when Anthony foolishly tried to outcompete Jerome for fastest scree-descender, our walk down the alternate route was without incident - although I was quite tired of walking on unstable scree by the time we finally set foot on the Larch Valley trail at 7pm. The shadows had grown long and most of Larch Valley was in the shade, but no matter - from here it was a plain and straightforward hike on smooth trail, all the way back to Moraine Lake.
Arriving back to maintained trail
