Cutthroat Peak - East Face Couloir 5/3/2008
Trip: Cutthroat Peak - East Face Couloir
Date: 5/3/2008
Trip Report:Despite downright balmy weather on Saturday, we found the east face couloir in FUN conditions. For a relatively short route, it still managed to take a full day on the move. We left the car at Blue Lake TH around 4am, picked the dark lump on the horizon that most fit the direction of Cutthroat, and bombed off into the trees with a compass bearing. We inadvertently took the scenic route to the east face, and while indeed scenic, it was not the quickest.
7am finally found us roped and geared up, on-route up the lower section. A pitch and a half of soft snow put us at the base of THE money pitch. We both agreed this pitch was just plain fun. We found a combination of thin, delaming ice for your right appendages, and decent sticks in the corner for your left. Gear was mostly small nuts on the left. This crux pitch probably only garners the WI4 due to the condition of the ice when people typically climb it. I was surprised to find the difficulties shorter (maybe 80 feet) and more kicked back (75-80 deg) than your average 4. A 70m rope stretcher got us up the corner and to a sweet cave, just left of the short step that puts you onto the upper face. Some brilliant sunshine softened things up nicely for one more rope stretcher that put us on the ridge. Not a whole lot of route finding going on here--just head straight up. This penultimate pitch was low on pro, with a tree slung about 1/3 the way, and high on steep soft mush. No worries, almost there. One last full 70m pitch took us up the ridge, slowly at times as the snow was getting looser and a couple mini-cornices required mini-battles to get past.
We stood on the top in the sun, around noon, for about a half-hour before beginning the descent. There is an obvious gully to rap through, with many choices for anchors. We did five double rope raps, but you could get through it with a single and down-climbing just fine. From the bottom, it took a 45 minute post-hole session to circle back around to the southeast basin and gather the snowshoes, and a little over an hour to plunge back down to the road. Weather closed in, and we ended the day descending through light snow into light rain as we made for the car.
All in all, a super fun day out on a nice moderate in an awesome locale. Get it while its hot, which won't be long if the sun has anything to say about it.
Gear Notes:What you need: two 13's, some small nuts, 2-3 medium cams
Approach Notes:Don't just aim for Cutthroat from the car. Walk 1/2 mile west on 20 to a plowed 1 car pullout on the north side. Head straight up the valley through light trees, staying east of the south ridge until underneath the east face. I'm not so sure I understand the selected climbs description.
