Elevation Gain: 1,589m
Distance: 17.04km
Total Time: 9 hours 10 minutes
Date: August 25th, 2024
Verdejo Peak is a somewhat obscure summit at the headwaters of Noel Creek. It seems to be mostly granitic like the nearby Incisors, but just south the geology changes drastically. I had very little information on Verdejo, but it looked like it would make for a fine addition for a ridge traverse from The Incisors. Our group had just finished descending off of The Incisors summit and were now making our way across the col to reach the large boulder field below.
Ahead was a receding dry glacier and numerous slabs and tame snow slopes from which one could select a route to the summit. We scrambled through a number of said slabs climber’s left of the glacier and then eventually stepped out on to the glacier itself. From there it was an easy walk up to a snow finger and then we gained the ridge proper. The ridge was quite tame until the last summit block were a bit of 3rd class scrambling got us to the top. A few hundred meters east a nearby twin summit looked concerningly similar in height. However, bivouac and other official map sources seemed to confirm we were on the true summit, so I put my trust on that.
By now the clouds had moved in and stooped down to around 2500m, creating a rather moody and colourful scene. Just south was Valpolicella, breaking up the gray colour of granite with rusty red rocks, jet black streaks and a rather deep turquoise lake. It looked too enticing not add on to our traverse and so we got to work descending a promising sandy gully on the south side of the summit block.
This gully took us nearly to the bottom before bluffing out some 40m to go. Sarah found a reasonable 4th class line down clean rock, while Alex stuck to some grassy but more ledgy terrain climber’s left. The climbing proved to be engaging and fun and it took us awhile to regroup at the bottom. By then the summit motivation had abated somewhat, but I was still keen to go check out it and worked to rally the group for one last peak. “Let’s just check out the ridge” turned to a few more steps closer to the summit and finally everyone was back on board with a third peak. So of we went to Valpolicella!
