Trip: Southern Pickets - A Thread of Ice 2nd Ascent and 1st Ski Descent

Date: 7/4/2011

Trip Report:
Over a clear weather window Louie Dawson and I spent 3 days adventuring, climbing, and skiing in the Southern Pickets.
Sorry it took a lot of work to write and add photos all info can be found here: http://mtnsaremyhome.blogspot.com/

Gear Notes:
Lots

Approach Notes:
Long

Cool, knew this would be tried sooner or later. No summit?

Nice one. Killer!

Wayne, it was our original plan to climb both summits like you, a few things contributed to our decision not to. Time: we ran into a rock band followed by a pretty big cornice right at the top of the saddle, we could have climbed it but it would have been a very dangerous down climb, or the added time of another rap, as it was we had a 16hr day moving pretty quick most of the time, you rapped down the south face, with descending the thread we then had to go back up the n col of the Outto, down the s face(rap again) and across the basin and back up to the chopping block. Gear: we prob went a bit too light, we only had one 60m 8mil rope, 1 pin, 5 nuts, 2 cams, 2 sticks and 2 rap rings. Climbing rock in ski boots is not very inspiring, we weren't sure how much of the rack we would burn on the decent(we found pretty good horns and natural stuff so it worked ok), also from the photos you guys used two doubles, so we guessed whatever you had left for anchors would be for full length raps. haha and finally we were both getting pretty sketched out at that point and just wanted to get the ski down done

Thanks all, it was a great trip! I lurk a lot on here and I know its nicer to have TR's directly on the page with photos, but after loading and editing it all once for the blog I was out of energy to do it again, so sorry about that...

Good for you getting in there in the first place. It's not the easiest approach into Terror Creek and then into the North side and back out again.

That's a great trip. Well done!