Western Front, Mount Russell
Channel: Darshan Ahluwalia
Date: 2022-06-14

Mount Russell is a 14er near the highest mountain in the contiguous US, Mount Whitney. The approach to the base of the mountain goes past Mount Whitney and Iceberg lake, up the Whitney-Russell pass. It is about 5 miles and gains 5000' of vertical. Western Front goes directly up the center of the 900' West Face of Russell with most of the climbing around 5.9 difficulty except the very end which is easy fifth. No bolts, all natural belays which sometimes take a little creativity. On pitch two lies the crux, where one must climb a corner finger crack/layback through a steep bulge. On the third, you traverse out towards the outside edge of a massive corner, then ascend the double and triple cracks. Awesome exposure here. Belay on the airy arete, then continue up the arete for the fourth pitch until its possible to set a belay for the crux fifth pitch. I traversed way left on a ledge system to belay in a corner with bomber gear as the recommended belay is a nightmare flake backed up with a good cam in a pocket (which I didn't find). The opening moves on this pitch are tough. Traverse around the arete and make a big stem into the corner. You're now in the second crux pitch, a 5.10- finger to hand crack that goes on forever. Since we belayed far left in the corner, we broke this pitch into two and belayed at a nice ledge mid pitch. This corner is the best climbing on the whole climb. Imagine: 200 feet of sustained 5.10- on solid rock, solid gear, solid stems and locks at 13500 feet. The "final" pitch is also a good one: steep 5.8 double crack. We did another pitch after that, a 200' rope stretcher navigating up easy 5th class. It started thunderstorming on us a little on that pitch, which scared the crap out of us, since we we're still working towards the summit and also had the exposed ridgeline descent ahead of that. Luckily the storm fizzled out and we didn't get soaked with hail or electrocuted by lightning. Our times were as follows: 530-6AM start; 8AM Upper Boyscout where we pumped water; by 11AM we were climbing the first pitch; by 5PM we were finished with our last pitch; by 730-8PM we were back at the packs at Upper Boyscout; at 1030-11PM back at the car.