Ice Ice Ice The season is off to a stellar start!
Well last weekend went great as far as climbing goes. Climbers with Grant, Anna, and Danylo (Richard was sick). Saturday was spend up at R+D again, but with really different and REALLY wet conditions. I played around with the adjutants on my crampon and the climb great now! Add to this that my forearms are starting to remember this holding onto the ice tools thing, and the season is off to a stellar fuckin' start! R+D was so wet that I was wishing I had my paddling jacket and not my bulky old goretex that really isn't as 'waterproof' as it used to be, and seems to have a few "vent" that it didn't originally have.
Sunday. Sunday was a different day. We started be hiking up the ridge at Fortress ski hill to take a look at Martial Arts and Moonshadow Gully. The snow on the 'good slope', the one we hiked up wasn't too bad, but I still found two weaknesses. One about 4 inches down with moderate results and one at the ground interface with the same results. When we topped out I saw some sloughing off the cliffs above the bowl we would have to cross to get to the climbs, and got the "I'm not feeling it" spidey sense tingles. I observed for a while and could I identify more warning signs on the cliffs and in the bowl. I raised me concerns and said I would be willing to check the snow at the edge of the bowl, but wasn't prepared to or comfortable with crossing the slope. We decided to turn around and go to King's Creek. A good decision as it turned out. It was a good training hike anyways and I enjoyed the exercise. King creek was great, even the Scottish gully was in great thin-ish conditions. I had talked up the gully to Grant and when he came around to corner and I told him it was it... Well he was so happy I didn't want to take the lead from him. I did want the lead though :) A few quick runs up the seeps and we were off.
A mass spaghetti dinner at home for everyone thanks to Laurie was our end of climb reward.
The only downside to the day was finding out that evening that there had been an incident near Fortress that day involving two ice climbers. More on this in the next post.
Sunday. Sunday was a different day. We started be hiking up the ridge at Fortress ski hill to take a look at Martial Arts and Moonshadow Gully. The snow on the 'good slope', the one we hiked up wasn't too bad, but I still found two weaknesses. One about 4 inches down with moderate results and one at the ground interface with the same results. When we topped out I saw some sloughing off the cliffs above the bowl we would have to cross to get to the climbs, and got the "I'm not feeling it" spidey sense tingles. I observed for a while and could I identify more warning signs on the cliffs and in the bowl. I raised me concerns and said I would be willing to check the snow at the edge of the bowl, but wasn't prepared to or comfortable with crossing the slope. We decided to turn around and go to King's Creek. A good decision as it turned out. It was a good training hike anyways and I enjoyed the exercise. King creek was great, even the Scottish gully was in great thin-ish conditions. I had talked up the gully to Grant and when he came around to corner and I told him it was it... Well he was so happy I didn't want to take the lead from him. I did want the lead though :) A few quick runs up the seeps and we were off.
A mass spaghetti dinner at home for everyone thanks to Laurie was our end of climb reward.
The only downside to the day was finding out that evening that there had been an incident near Fortress that day involving two ice climbers. More on this in the next post.
posted by Brenden Ramsay at 2:19 PM
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