Sphinx Mountain
August 7, 2007
I had wanted to climb Electric Peak, but that turned out to be a 20 mile round-trip hike, with a long drive too. When I saw Sphinx Mountain from Cinnamon Mountain, I decided to climb that instead. Upon researching it, I found it would be only about a 12 mile hike (or so) only about 45 miles by the road from camp. The day prior to the climb, I purchased a book at the Canyon Village Visitors’ Center on climbs in the greater Yellowstone area. It described the route up Sphinx Mountain—this was encouraging.
We were met at the trailhead by a Forest Service volunteer who informed us that the trail had just that day been reopened to hikers. It had been closed for a few days while they were monitoring bear activity on an elk carcass. We took our first break only about a mile up the trail, before the valley began to open up into the typical grizzly meadow, then hiked straight through, passed the junction where the elk carcass had been reported, and on up about a mile beyond into the forest. Whew! After a few more miles we got our first closeup views of The Sphinx and The Helmet. My, are they impressive mounts, with their cliffs and steep slopes!
It was still only 11:30 when we left the saddle after a short snack break, so we headed on up the climbers’ trail. I followed the directions given in the book to traverse over to the right side of the gully, even though it appeared that most people climbed it on the left side. We scrambled up the steep meadow, finally traversing back just below the upper cliff to the gully and rejoined the more distinct climbers trails there. A final push got us to the summit about 45 minutes before our turn-around time of 2 p.m.
We stayed on top only about half an hour as it was apparent that a storm was coming in. On our way down the gully we were treated to a grapple shower (some wanted to call it snow.) Lower on the slope we met a couple young fellows who were climbing up to the summit. On our way out, we again hurried through the grizzly meadow.
Climbers were: Marianne Camp, Steve Johnson, Chris Minirich, Dick Moffitt, Rich Romm and Wayne Deeter, leader.
First closeup view of The Sphinx. Looks imposing, but not nearly so much so as
from the other side.
The Helmet
Rich, Steve, Marianne, Dick and Chris at the saddle
The Sphinx from the saddle
The Helmet just shows above the false summit, Madison River Valley beyond
Last view of The Sphinx and The Helmet on our drive back to camp
photos by Wayne Deeter