Monument Peak: First Target of the Summer?

As I've gotten more and more mountaineering experience over the last two years, I've slowly come to realize that successfully summiting a peak is less about the energy of unbridled enthusiasm and more about careful planning, patience, and a willingness to value safety over "adventure." 

But unbridled enthusiasm sure as hell doesn't hurt.

Nowadays, my preparations for a climb seem to move through three distinct phases, the middle one being the longest and arguably the most important. In this middle stage, I spend a bunch of time printing out topo maps, poring over them, marking out possible ascent routes, alternate ascent routes, emergency descent routes, camping spots, and the like. I read trip reports and stare at images like this one for way too long, making sure that I have all the navigational points and climbing hazards of my chosen route memorized. I do this partially for safety's sake and partially because it's fun. It's fun to obsess over details in the days and weeks of pre-trip excitement, but it's also fun to be out there on the rock for the first time and feel like you know it already, at least a little bit, despite  never having seen it before. Plus, it's also nice to run into a gendarme and know before you start passing it that skirting it to the south will cost you altitude but skirting to the north will require crossing a terrifying rock catwalk that faces a 2,000 foot drop.

One one hand: gorgeous. On the other hand: don't sneeze.

The point is, while this middle stage of preparation is generally very methodical, and the last stage of preparation (waiting for weather to clear and for various other logistics-related variables to fall in to place) is mostly out of my control, the first stage is interestingly intuitive. You see, even in the Palouse, there are a rather large amount of satisfyingly climbable mountains within a decent enough driving distance for a weekend or three-day trip (say, within 2-5 hours' drive). It goes without saying that "eventually climb them all" is not a reasonable goal, as much as I would like it to be. So here's where intuition comes in. 

Step one of preparation involves combing through information on lots of nearby mountains until at some point, one just...clicks. There's no other way to describe it. I've heard people talk about lots of other things this way, though; for some reason, choosing a puppy to buy from the neighbor's litter is the example that comes to mind. You happily wade into the sea of puppies, and play a little with all of them until that one that you just can't stop playing with fixes you with his/her huge, beseeching, adorable, slightly-stupid puppy gaze and you know that he/she is The One. And that's the story you tell for the next 12-15 years every time you tell someone about choosing your puppy. Puppy-magic happens, and BAM! you know it's puppy time.

Every time should be puppy time.

Anyway, my point is that there's a similarly weird chemistry at work when I'm reading up on mountains. Eventually one just clicks with me, and I know for sure that I'm prepared to invest the time and effort necessary to summit it just because. In this particular case, I came across this picture of Monument Peak the other day, and it hooked me. 

Now, this was a severe test of my climbing intuition, because I've done one climb in the Seven Devils Mountains each of the last two summers (He Devil in '11 and Devil's Throne in '12), and while both were definitely worth the trip, they were both easily the least enjoyable climb of that particular summer, for various reasons (heat and rock quality being two of those reasons). After getting back from Devil's Throne last summer, I joked to Lindsey that Seven Devils was a place where one should climb once at the end of each summer, after already climbing all the mountains one actually wanted to climb. At some point, the desert-scrub, flaky-rock aesthetic of the Devils becomes alluring, but only really once you've had your fun for the year and just want to see it once, briefly, before the snows set in.

So why Monument Peak, and why right away? I don't know! That's sort of the whole point of this blog post, I guess. I have no idea why I want to go there, but I do. I don't know why I can't wait to climb around in this shitty-looking basin...

...but for some reason, I do.

And this is even worse:

But now I've entered the part of the year where I (im)patiently wait for the high-altitude snow to at least mostly melt, and I hope (for some inexplicable reason) that I can get to Monument Peak sooner rather than later. Maybe it's a result of all the time I've spent hiking in Hells Canyon lately or something, but I find the idea of returning to that area a few more times this summer exciting, rather than being my sort of last-ditch option. Anyway, I've chosen my ugly, ugly puppy, it seems. I've probably go another month at least before I can seriously start considering climbing it, but I'll keep you posted.