Elevation Gain: 3,055m
Distance: 41.69km
Total Time: 2 days
Date: September 27th, 2025
(Stats include the The Deacon, Orthodox and our traverse)
Matriarch Mountain forms the first peak along the Matriarch-Macabre-Grimface traverse and was one of the last summits to be climbed in the Cathedral Park area. To my knowledge all routes to the summit are technical in nature and it’s almost exclusively climbed as part of the MMG traverse. The voie normale, involves one 5.4 pitch from the col with “Denture Ridge” and Matriarch and then either a 5.8 hand crack or a 5.3 thrutchy chimney to the top. To continue to Grimface several rappels and a long system of technical and scramble terrain on ridges stand in the way.
Alex and I had set out for the Cathedral area to do this exact traverse. We had arrived on the 27th and scrambled up The Deacon and Orthodox Mountain before turning in. Now a 6am wake up had us marching up to the start of the MMG traverse just an hour later. The ascent up was fairly pleasant with a dabble of scree treadmill here and there. Just before reaching the base of the 5.4 pitch Alex diverted climber’s left to test out an alternate route. While he scoped that out, I swapped into climbing shoes and upon hearing confirmation that “it goes” I set off to join him. I climbed up a gully and then some low 5th/4th class moves up on the ridge and there we hit our first road block. A slabby looking dihedral had us looking around for other options.
I made an exposed moved out climbers right and reached a broad ledge with a short chimney and slab above. With my backpack I couldn’t quite squeeze in though. Alex ditched his pack and found an amenable move up and then we passed bags up and I pulled through as well. That allowed us to bypass the 5.4 pitch, but it probably wasn’t worthwhile in hindsight.
As this was transpiring, the wind had really started to pick up and fire smoke was beginning to encroach on the terrain around us. Really it was a matter of 15-20 minutes and we departed from clear skies to pure smog. In any event, we pressed on and gained the broad ridge above where we spotted Anna and Megan, the two climbers we met at the parking lot. They had actually bivied on the ridge with the intention of traversing all the way out on the highline trail instead of dealing with the deadfall ridden Wall Creek approach again. That was my lightbulb moment, realizing we could have and should have done the same.
We chatted briefly at the base of the 5.8/5.3 wall and then we elected to climb the 5.8 route. Alex went up first and then myself and we both found the moves quite easy. It was short enough that we didn’t bother bringing out the rope. Ahead lay the summit of Matriarch and to the north we could see the long ridge up to Grimface. We quickly went up to the summit and then made way to the first rappel station that would take us to Grimface.
