Mount Jefferson South Ridge

The guidebook indicated that the only hazards on this route were "dehydration and boredom."  We laughed about that on our way up but... well, it's kind of true.  The ridge literally goes on for miles and with only a few sections of terrain that allowed for fast movement, hours and hours went by as we slowly, deliberately gained elevation.  The bonus for this trip was that we were climbing in the season's first snow so there were a few fun little snow fields to navigate through and when we reached the traverse, our psych was elevated when we realized that we would be traversing below the summit pinnacle on fresh, fairly consolidated snow, rather than on the sea of scree that was likely present prior to this week's precipitation.

We originally started from the Pamelia Lake TH, not being aware that the Limited Entry permits applied to people hiking through the are as well.  Five miles up the trail, we were stopped by a disgruntled ranger who threatned to fine us if we did not "cooperate," turn around, and return to the trail head.  We turned around, warned the climbers coming up the trail below us, and came up with a plan to ditch our packs in the woods, return to Pamelia Lake, drive to Woodpecker Ridge, and hike back in as far as we could that night.  Suffice to say, starting the trek in over was an annoying addition to the day and ended up adding extra 10 miles to the day.

We had a photo of a short cut (part of the SW ridge?) up a drainage that avoided going all the way to Shale Lake that we were planning on taking, but after 30 minutes of bushwacking in the dark, we elected to continue hiking on the PCT.  We hiked about 7 miles up the PCT from Woodpecker Ridge TH before finding a place to camp.  The next morning, we woke at 545am, sorted out our packs, left my heavy pack and our camping equipment stashed in the woods, and set off up the trail.  When we reached Shale Lake, the route to the Climber's path became highly unclear (review our track for the full extent to which we went meandering). The beta for the VERY CLEARLY MARKED climber's trail is the following:

Hang a left at this junction to circumnavigate Coyote Lake aka "The Mud Hole" until you come to a small clearing.

There is a small cairn on the left that appears to indicate that the trail should continue to the left into another meadow- it does not. Instead, hike slightly further into this clearing, and take a small trail on the left, which appears to be a drainage.

Follow this trail, which is well-marked with cairns, until you reach an open scree field, framing Mt Jefferson- show below.  

We opted to climb to the top, right-hand side of this field (not recommended), but it appears that others walked up the middle, and slightly to the right. At the top, you will reach the beautiful overlook shown below:

After this, there are a number of ways to hit the South Ridge, we elected to cross the snow fields whenever we had the option to do so since they provided better traction than the scree and talus.  The rock on the ridge was much more solid than what is found on Jefferson's neighboring giants but caution should still be used when navigating the ridge. At the top of the ridge is a small, 3rd class pinnacle- a perfect location to scope out the traverse and put on crampons, bust out ice axes, etc.  

The snow on the traverse was in excellent condition and offered relatively stable and safe passage despite the steepness of the angle (60+ degrees in places) and the risk of injury by rock fall. Safety necessitated speed during this climb and we opted to wait for slower parties to move out far in front of us before hitting the traverse on the way back.  The summit pinnacle itself was just plain fun- a variety of rock, snow, and ice that yielded interesting mixed climbing and some fun, relatively mild exposure.  We roped up for only a brief section of the climb.

We were in luck and the weather held throughout the time we spent on the summit- we had views from Adams all the way to Diamond Peak!  

We rappelled the first section off the summit and saw another set of rap rings on our way down.  Conditions, however, were good enough that we elected to downclimb back to the traverse and start our descent.