Trip: Der Hood-Wand - North Face - Right Gully
Date: 1/18/2009
Trip Report:
cc.com'ers almost got all they've been wishing for fir fuck-long - another tauntaun-less debacle on the shady-side and tvashtarketena rendered retarded!
fuck, how can things start so grand only to go wrong, like your demented grandmother crapping in your latte
the scene set up right - tvash over for the highlife late friday - socializing w/ my crazy-eyed killa little bro, back from the war - darts and basics - school was in session for anyone who fancies themselves a cricket-shooter
maybe the hurricane-force gale blasting through the gorge was an auger? up to the tilly jane lot early in the frosty-ass saturday morning, things sure seemed promising though - fahq'n beautiful blue-bird skies- not a breath of a breeze - fantastically fast, icy footpaht up to the hut - don't need snowshoes at the moment but definitely crampons! the recent fire has really improved the view on the trail - now youcan spot the cloud cap lodge long before getting to tj - it acts as a great reference point
the plan was to bivy high ( ) and get a fresh, early start on the face on sunday - walked up the moraine and down onto the glacier - perfect styrofoam snow/ice - lousy skiiing but there were a few folks out dry-humping it for what it was worth - the snowshovel i brought was totally worthless - no way to carve a camp but w/ a saw (or maybe the nitro!) so we choose a nice flat spot just below the bench below the main icefall at 7600 ft - didn't seem to be any other flat spots between their and the n face gullies but actually there's a very, very, very cool spot at about 9000 feet now, in a wind scoop right against the spur wall, abutting the giant moat, right by several cool iceflows (i'd recomend camping there and ice-craging on day 1 (the snow ramp exitback onto the elliot comes out there), then do the n face and make your fast, easy descent back to camp from the spur on day 2
fun n' games saturday afternoon - there was a bit of wind but it seemed like the stars had aligned and we were going to get the ultimate good-conditions for the route - camp was up in a flash and we took the dime tour of the ice-carnage along the bench (excellent pictures, video and accompanying four-part harmony for the tr to be inserted latter, after tvash disposes of the responsibilities of your typical absentee land-lord) - cold down in the shade (sunshine hits the route between 8-9 a.m. but thats all for the day) but very warm temps for jan
but late afternoon the wind started up...hard cooking outside and my smokes were smoking themselves! - pulled the operation inside tvash's b.d., which is about the size of a phone booth on its side good thing we're tea-sipping, yoga-practicing, quasi-philospical libtard fucks that we can share such a cramped space w/o rebukes (perhaps b/c tvash is so hollow?) managed to simmer up all the water we required while pat napped and i did what verse's of beowulf my alititude-adled brain could recall ("shild was still thriving when his time came...a ring-whorled prow rode in the harbor, ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince")
by dark the wind was becoming a bitch - bivouaced as i was on the weather-side of the coffin, i found more use for my airpad as a shield-wall then a butt-plate - despite the groan and whistles and dramatic mutatations in the tent-form growing minutely, we both slept well - 46 degrees in the tent in winter firfuksake! i scored big in my decision to bring just my summer-bag - i dreamt that the wind was my lover, her lulls her misgivings, her lashes her demands made plain
up at 3 and on our way by 5 - amazingly strong gusts would ramp out of nowhere, blasting us nearly flat - the great expanse of the ice-field scoured by wind-wraiths - dust devils on crack cruising along - great plumes of spindrift coursing off the spur and out into space - the whole scene reminded me intensely of days spent drug-deranged at 14k on denali
things had gone from seeming perfect to perfectly shitty in just half a day - it was intimidating to think of trying to climb the bits of technical ice on the route when we couldn't even stand up strait on the glacier, but surely it can't be so windy in the gully, eh? ("stop calling me shirley") - the left gully was clearly a madhouse, a raging water-fall of powder, but the right seeed quite calm, and no sight of cascading corpse-making rocks and ice-chunks - well, shit, we're here, let's see what kind of trouble we can get into?
the 'schrund challenge is fun right now, and a good deal more difficult then i recalled it as - 80 neve fin to a clamber into a downclimb onto the debris precariously perched above the void, then right onto an improbable snow/rock ramp around the corner and out of the 'schrund on its right side - spectacular cruiser neve from there up to the base of the first steep ice-pitch
we'd begun getting nailed by small debris near the shrund, but big shit was mixed in there sometimes too - a deep gouge pierces the apron and drains the gully above the shrund and it was alive w/ bouncing particles of increasingly larger caliber - there was a bit of shelter at the anchor below the ice pitch, but i took several shots while leading up - the ice here was nasty shit compared to the canadian cream i'd last been playing on! just above the scene was horrorific - the next ice step was alive w/ stonefall - i was out of rope so moved the anchor as close to the mud-walls as possible for cover - shitty conditions for building a solid anchor but ah, well
by the time pat was with me i was pretty sure our dalliance into danger was needing to be concluded - the decision to flee becoming suddenly a demanding preoccupation- so much big shit was hurtling down, pat yelping and bitching as he was hit on the step - he got up next to me and we had a perfunctory conversation, half-drowned by spindrift - we agreed we needed to rap, but there was no way a v-thread could be made out the crap i was set up in - he moved over to build one in the center of the gully, an excercise i cast a much desultry glance over while belaying him
he didn't get to see how close he came to dying or getting rendered demented - i heard a loud crash from somewhere high up - saw a shotgun splay of giant ice-chunks launching out far over our heads, but then caught site of a number of rock-blocks bounching down towards us - he was so intent w/ the screw he didn't notice, but i watched a tv-sized boulder impact by his foot, a mouse-fart away, looking away at the last second so i wouldn't have to wipe his fuckign brains off my glasses
right around then i deduced i didn't much care about sacrificing my picket in the bold name of getting the fuck outta dodge - in the relative shelter of the wall, i pounded it in w/ my hammer, then munterhitch abseiled back on down - tvash followed, we simul-soloed back to the top of the shrund while the face kept up its fire - there we cut in a big bollard, and we rapped over the overhanging schrund down into the debris and some good cover
the rest of the day passed well enough - the wind was worse out of the gullies of course, so we settled on a tour of the upper elliot area - crossed over the top of the ice fall, nearly got blown over to st helens by the blast rounding the snowdome, then descended to camp - the elliot headwall looks phaaaat right now!
getting out of camp was a serious and complicated endeavor, and demanded a bit of safety meeting, passed while munching on homemade chocholate cookies (w/ the dark n' white mixed nuggets - thanx honey!), polishing off the final drops of vino with my remaining cigarette, and cater-wauling "lord i was born a rambling man" in tune to the incessant flapping of tent - the disaster that defined the rest of my day started then - sometime earlier a piece of wind-blasted volcanic grit denuded my cornea, and what had been a slight annoyance, the kind i've suffered countless times at beacon when cleaning old lines, suddenly grew into a debilitating condition - by the time we'd packed up and recovered the tent, a delicate operation in such a tempest, i could hardly keep the eye open - the rest of that day, from the time we started to descend to the time i woke up at home this morning, i spent in anguish and strange headspace, tearing at my brow - my eyes closed almost all the time - stumbling - hurrying - wanting to be done and at the car just so i could relax my face - the wind - fuuuuck!
still, all's well that ends well, and on this particuliar occasion it ended w/ new "flight of the conchords" and a fine merlot, a silken eye-patch clasped to the side of my befuddled noggin!
in conclusion, to the business: the whole n side of the mountain is in incredibly good climbing condition - ice and neve everywhere - zero avy danger - both n face gullies are fat - if it hadn't have been for the wind, it would have been the ultimate everything - alas...
Gear Notes:
took 6 screws and a picket
