Gore Crest Traverse Day 4: Spice Factory Ridge

June 15, 2026

This was arguably the most chill day of our traverse, given that we only planned on traversing a short (slightly over 1 mile) section of ridge, including a section called The Spice Factory which ran a half mile between Peak W and X Prime. We would leave our overnight packs at camp, completing this section in a loop from camp with nothing on our backs.

Unlike the last couple days, we didn't set an alarm, waking up naturally around 7:30am. I poked my head out of the tent to see fairly large cumulus clouds scuttling across the sky, but the forecast had assured us that no rain would fall today and the clouds were merely moisture left over from the previous day's storms. 

By 8am, we were hiking up northwest, aiming for the point we had left off the previous day while descending East Partner's northeast ridge. We hit the ridge easily enough and began traversing along it towards Peak W. A cool section of easy knife edge was traversed shortly after the lowpoint between East Partner and W, followed by a short easy slog to the summit of W.

Now we were ready to begin The Spice Factory which ran between Peak W and X Prime for about half a mile. This section of ridge was characterized by class 4-5 climbing on knife edges and towers which generally comprised of great rock. The junkiest part of this was getting off the east side of Peak W, where we located a gully followed by a low 5th chimney which brought us to the lowpoint between W and X Prime.

From the lowpoint, we ascended more low 5th class terrain up the right (southwestern) shoulder of the following pinnacle, utilizing a chimney and dihedral system. A series of ledges brought us back up to the crest, which we followed along all the way to X Prime. The terrain mellowed out here, remaining mostly class 3 all the way to X Prime. I would not recommend deviating off the very crest at this point as all other options looked harder. 

We reached the summit of X Prime about an hour after leaving W. I reveled in how fun The Spice Factory had been, thinking that it wasn't all that spicy. To be fair, we didn't have packs on which probably made it feel significantly easier than similar terrain encountered on the previous days with packs. 

From X Prime, we descended to Usable Pass, the lowpoint between X Prime and Vista Peak to the south. We followed a junky gully to the left (east) side of X Prime to avoid a vertical section of ridge, then quickly veered back onto the ridge about 300 ft down. A short section of scrambling led to a very cool knife edge feature which I nicknamed "horsey arete." There were many creative ways to climb it, including straddling it like a horse. 

From Usable Pass, we easily descended southwest back to camp, completing the whole loop in around 3.5 hours. It wasn't even noon yet, and we had the rest of the day to lounge around camp and relax.