Climb: Colfax Peak-Cosley-Houston route
Date of Climb: 12/11/2005
Trip Report: Mark and I climbed the Cosley-Houston route yesterday. Have to agree with dberdinka's assessment of this route from this March. It's really cool.
We found similar conditions on the route as he describes in March. And we were able to get to about 2800' on the road--a key bit as skiing up (or down for that matter) the road could be a rather serious endeavor. Seems like this is a good one to hit in the fall or spring.
We skied the trail up on Saturday, but ended up hiking back down it (it melted out too much). There was a crazy temperature inversion going on. In the town of Glacier, it was well below freezing and hiking up past the Kulshan cabin site, it was downright balmy and the snow coverage was minimal.
Going up the trail, Mark said that the good thing about temperature inversions, is that its usually really still. By the time we got up onto the hogsback, the spindrift flying and the plumes off of Colfax and the Black Buttes lit up in the afternoon sunlight.
We camped on the big table about 5800' and did some soloing around on a good ice flow nearby. The wind kept up in long gusts through the night and the whole next day.
Skiing up to the base of the route took us a good long time, but finally we got on the route and it was in great shape similar to the conditions described in March. We traversed left after the final ice step, topping out above the Polish Lamb Sausage route. We got to the top just before the light faded.
Thankfully, the descent down the east ridge was pretty straightforward. The moonlight was awesome all the way down!!
Polish Lamb Sausage looks rad by the way for all you hardcores...
Gear Notes: 1 50m rope
small rock rack (tricams!!)
5 ice screws
3 pitons (didn't use)
1 picket (didn't use, could have but...)
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