Last Ice Climbing Trips
13th and 17th March, 2008
By Jay Harrison
Secret Ice Bonanza revealed!
Jason Brechko invited me out for a climb at his secret ice/rock climbing destination in mid-March. We only had afternoons of two days to utilize, and as it turns out the ice was too far gone to climb on our last trip out, but it was brilliantly sunny so we clambered around and explored a bit instead of ice climbing; so neither day was wasted.
13th March
After a lengthy drive down an icy, dead-end road, the approach to Jason's secret stash takes an hour and a half, involves two stream crossings, a steep climb over an intermediate ridge, then a steep slog uphill in order to reach the ice. It isn't a casual outing or an after-work hotspot (as oxymoronic as that term is for ice climbing anyway). We carried snowshoes, but the crust supported us most of the time. I did notice that Jason, with his huge boots postholed less than I did. I am positive this had nothing to do with my winter fat...
We arrived with plenty of time to climb a promising line hidden near the cirque's left side. Jason had been dreaming of this route for a long time, so he was very stoked now that the opportunity had arrived. We pulled on harnesses and flaked out rope; meanwhile the clouds began dropping snow. It looked like it might get pretty heavy, which made me wonder how the car would manage getting us back to some semblance of civilization.
That was a problem for later though; at the moment Jason was concentrating on his route. From the bottom, the flow coalesced from three distinct lines. The far left was a narrow curtain of ice draped over an overhanging bulge. It looked quite skinny, possibly insecure as well. The far right pinched into a wide, dead-vertical chimney; it looked interesting, but placing pro would be very pumpy, if it was possible at all. The center was both wide and fat; with our time constraint, it was the best option for us.
Jason headed up, hesitating shortly at the bottom as he got a feel for the ice conditions; then smoothly continued upward to the headwall. A small pedestal enabled an advance screw placement, and then he launched through the difficulties, quickly working up onto low-angle ice above. He worked his way left here to gain a good tree belay. And called "Off." It was my turn to ride.
The ice was wonderfully sticky, so it was a joy to climb up, the only impediments being the few screws I had to remove. Once I made it to the belay, we stood on top, enjoying the view for awhile. Snow still trickled out of the sky, but it had dwindled to a safely-harmless flurry, without obliterating our view. Off in the distance, we could see Crane Mountain's familiar shape on the horizon. Across the valley below, we could spy the cliffs Jason had been working on during the summer.
The route is a bit over 100' high, grade 3+/4-. Jason dubbed it Castle in the Sky. The rappel barely makes it to the ground from the trees we used. There is more ice above our high point, but the next higher available tree would require a 70 meter rope in order to make a rappel.
Later inspection would reveal more ice possibility above our position, but most of it is short pitches of steep stuff interspersed with low-angle ice or snow wallowing. It would make a fine full-day outing.
We chose to descend and explore a bit, even though it was getting late. We worked our way right along the bottom of the cliff and upward, quickly reaching a point where there was cliff above and below us. The short bits of ice above were easy enough to solo, and then we had to work our way back downward to get a look at the mega-line of this cliff.
I tried to take pictures, but it was far too dark for the camera to show anything. Recording the sight would have to wait for the next trip.
17th March, 2008
Too Far Gone
Jason managed to arrange one more day out of work early enough to head out again less than a week later. The weather was very nice, enough to cause some concern about ice conditions; but we both figured it was worth the risk. That line we had looked at in the end was mentally teasing us both, and though I strongly doubted its narrow bottom tendril would be passable after two days of warm weather and the current day's sunshine, I had to have a look anyway.
Since I was definitely the tail-dragging member of the group, I suggested we head there separately, so as to set up in advance if the ice was good. I also intended to take my time and a few pictures, as the sunshine promised some good photo-opps.
I wove my car along the dead-end road, only forgetting one major wash-out on the way in. Fortunately, the car survived the abuse. The sunshine had softened the crust a bit, so on my way out, I broke through more than previously. Like an idiot however, I refused to don my snowshoes until I was almost to the cirque, where the steepness made wearing them problematic.
Our target route was obviously unsafe to climb, as was most everything else. Ice tinkled or crashed down the walls all around, so I decided to ditch both snowshoes and pack and just be happy exploring toward the right end of the cirque. There might be ice over there that was still in shade.
Jason arrived barely a half hour after I did, and together we looked at our options. Nothing appeared solid enough to tackle on the main wall, and I didn't want to go back to our previous route or its neighboring climbs. We decided to walk across the bottom of the cirque, looking for either a shaded ice line or a ropeless way to reach the top, far end.
There were several signs of possible ice routes that had fallen, but nothing as good as our original destination nor as fat as the line of a few days earlier. We crossed all the way over to the other side, finding a narrow point to clamber through dense evergreens to the top of the ridge. Jason gained the top first and began walking back left to look at the ice lines from a different perspective.
The ridgeline we reached was perhaps half-way up the mountain. Where the hillside rose to go upward, we opted to follow a ledge system at about our altitude instead of going upward. The surface was generally iron crust, and the ledge sloped steeply down to the edge of the cliff we had just walked around, so we had to move carefully, kicking steps grabbing trees, planning emergency maneuvers should we slip. Of course, we both had left crampons, axes, ropes, and all other sensible equipment back in our packs.
The view opened up as the ledge narrowed near the center of the wall. The cameras came out and we began clicking away, me taking stills of the view while Jason took movies of the St. Patty's Day Idiots on the ledge. Openings among the trees looked across the valley toward the rock climbing cliffs Jason has been developing, and at the same time made the going tricky and a bit dangerous; something Jason called "between one and dumb," to which I added secretly, "fun." There is something marvelously enjoyable about managing risk; perhaps it is what twenty-first century men do instead of clubbing mastodons.
Gradually, we walked around the cirque until the view shifted toward the south-southeast. At one point, a prow of rock jutted out from the ledge, lending an excellent look back down to the snow slope we had crossed in search of a way through the cliffs. And my home turf came into view: Crane Mountain, its unmistakeable silhouette cutting the horizon.
The ledge makes it all the way across the cirque, albeit a bit scary and tenuous in spots. Once we managed to get onto wider real estate, the trick was getting lower. Our scrambles during the last trip had indicated there was no quick, safe descent route without equipment, so we continued slanting along the ridge, dropping down whenever it seemed feasible, hoping to avoid running into a dead end, since we couldn't rappel or even front-point our way out of trouble. Any technical obstacles would send us wallowing back upslope.
We did manage to get down pretty quickly, following deer tracks where we could, though this did carry us quite a ways around the mountain. We ended up past our Castle in the Sky, and had to slog our way downward, over, and back up to our gear. It was getting dark by the time we shouldered the packs and began the very long, weary tramp out to the cars. We walked in silence, tired from the day, but content with the adventure of the day.
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