bedellympian Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 (edited) Trip: Dragontail - Backbone Date: 8/16/2014 Trip Report: Chris Sepic and I drove down from Bend Friday to tackle the Backbone. I had wanted to do this route since I first saw a photo of it and Chris had a similar desire. I won't spray all the details as there are a bazillion and a half TRs on this thing, I'll just give our impressions and a brief summary. If you want a complete story and pictures check out my blog... Mountain Mischief Our estimate for the route car-car was 12 hours, definitely wishful thinking. We left the car at 5:30 am and reached Colchuck lake by 7:00, there is a small tongue of ice and snow we crossed to reach the 4th class ledge system. The rock was wet from the rain the day before, especially down low. Chris led the OW, we opted to bring doubles to 3 and one 5. He wished we had a 6, as does apparently everyone else who goes up there for the first time (see MP). This took us a long time and the next pitch was also slow with wet rock. After that we did a couple more odd pitches and then blasted into a simul block to the base of the fin. I linked pitches on as much of the fin as possible but it is definitely longer than expected. We reached the summit after 7pm. The snow field descent doesn't require pons or axe if you hit it in sun, but it was just a little slick in places when we got on it. Neither of us had been down Asgard, we thought we were on the right track, but definitely weren't. The light left us about a quarter of the way down with no cairns in sight. Awful knee bashing on loose rock (maybe from that rockfall Blake and Jens heard a couple weeks ago? or more likely that's just standard, either way, we were way too far skier's left next to Dtail) went on forever. We didn't find the proper cairns until within a quarter mile of the trail. Eventually we made it back to the car at 12:40 am. Overall fun route and we had a blast despite the descent. Gear Notes: doubles to #3, one #5, bring a #6 if you aren't super confident on 5.9 OW, 70m rope allows some serious linkage on da fin. Approach Notes: no pons or axe req'd Edited August 20, 2014 by bedellympian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 Nice effort. It's still best as a day trip. Going down Aasgard, the key is to pick up the first set of cairns at the top, which is further over towards CBR than you might think, and that after that you need to trend all the way over to the CBR side, the switchbacks go to the cliff itself, from the summit of the pass to at least half way down. Once you're on the path, doing it with a headlamp is very doable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
telemarker Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 Nice one up there. That was Loren and me you met up there and chased up the route. You guys shot through the Fin pitches quickly with that 70m of yours! You made me work hard to stay ahead, no easy task for an ancient guy like me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bedellympian Posted August 20, 2014 Author Share Posted August 20, 2014 Thanks John, nice to meet you and Loren. I've enjoyed your TRs for a while, Chris and I were actually just talking about your Hyperspace TR on the drive up there. I appreciate the compliments but we've got a long way to go before we're on the level of "ancient" guys like you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougd Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 That second to last pic of Stuart is pretty cool... d Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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