Trip: Alpental - Bryant

Date: 1/24/2009

Trip Report:
Dirty Dave, Professor Rupp and myself joined the hordes converging on Alpental early Saturday morning, planning on hitting the South Face of the Mighty Tooth, or anything in that area that seemed interesting. We stopped at the ice at the base of Bryant(?) where the trails to Chair and Great Scott Bowl diverge. Figured we'd give it a shot and see where it went.

1st pitch: WI3, M-easy. The base was dripping down the obvious line up th center, but the edges were solid enough and took screws well. Topped the ice out after 50ish feet, tooled through some low angle snow covered rock, taking advantage of some frozen earth for dirt sticks, past 2 sets of rap-tat, traversed right a few feet at the base of a small cliff band, downclimbed some rock, upclimbed some solid snow and set up belay in fat ice at the base of a smear.

2nd pitch: WI2. A short pitch, 40', up a well protected smear, with smooth rock walls on either side, to a small snow bowl. Anchored on a good size tree not far above the ice, climbers right.

Slogged up a few hundred feet of steepish, solid snow to the base of the next small band of rock. Lots of ice options here. Some easier ice to climbers right, 2+/3-, or...

3rd pitch: WI4. Another short bit of ice, around 40', forming in a left facing corner. Ice was thicker in the corner, getting thinner as ;you move left. There were also 2 thin, unprotectable smears to climbers left on the same rock band. Flow was probably 6 feet wide or so fairly steep, 80+ degrees,and nearly featureless. Some good placement rest options were available backstepping on the rock that forms the corner. Pulled over the top of the flow into a snow field. Ran out a good deal of rope to reach a large ice blob to set up belay.

4th pitch: WI1+. Lots of small, low angle ice steps, with plenty of discontinuous ice steps on the steeper cliffs to climbers left. We headed straight over a rambling low angle continuous flow to the base of a steep, loose, overgrown snow gully, nearing 80 degrees at the top. Climbed 60' of funky gulley, grovelling, hooking turf, with a final backhand into a good size tree to pull out of the gully. Belayed followers off 2 small trees.

This brough us out with Bryant looming over us. We hiked toward Bryant and eventually descended into the Great Scott Bowl.

Dose anyone know anything about this climb? Seems like a pretty obvious line, but I didn't see any evidence of the ice being climbed beyond the first pitch.

Though not a whole lotta ice for the length of the climb, it was a pretty sweet day out, with the ice on pitches 2 and 3 fun and in great shape.

Gear Notes:
2 heavy ass 60m ropes

Screws...mostly stubbies and 13's, though the 1st pitch, as well as the bases of pitches 2 and 3, took 22's.

We had a small rock rack, but only used a medium sized nut to protect near the base of the cliff band at the top of pitch 1, but had to pound it in with my tool. Lots of flaring crack and thin seams. Probably not worth taking any rock pro other than some thin pins.



Approach Notes:
Follw the boot track and look for the big hunk of ice near where the trail to Chair/Great Scott Bowl splits

photos?

photos?

no such luck. forgot the camera, along with my socks (!!)

found a shot that has the area, with approximate route of ascint in red. looks like the most of the ice on the first pitch and last pitch is burried. the rock bad about 3/4 of the way up is where the 3rd pitch is located, though a good portion of it seems to be under snow as well.


[img] Bryant Ice [/img]

sorry...trying to figure out how to attach this damn thing

isn't it called bryant butt Right? Rated wi 4 but it looks much easier than that right now. No mention of a route going past the two pitches in the guidebook. Sounds fun!

thanks. was have a hard time getting my bearings in the WA Ice guide.

what Gene said. Most of the time the upper stuff is a snow slope and completely buried. The Rap Wall is the wall at the very center of your circle in the pic.

Right on. Thanks. I was getting the feeling from all the pics I've seen that the ice up there doesn't see the light o' day very often.

I've climbed what you mention and I always thought that Bryant Buttress right was quite a bit right of the entire area of your picture? Alex would know though.
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Lot's of fat ice coming in right now up in the general vicinity of the pass with some sick steep unclimbed smears that could challenge a climber of any talent level.