Trip: Snow Creek Wall - White Slabs Ice
Date: 1/14/2007
Trip Report:
This should maybe have been posted in Alpine Lakes Forum, but ...
Dan Cappelini and I (Peter Hirst) climbed the right of two nice looking smears on Snow Creek Wall Saturday. The left smear approximately takes the Northern Dihedral Route, and the smear we climbed, the White Slabs or White Slabs Direct line.
Apparently, Rolf and Dan had climbed an ice line near this one a few years back.
I found thin ice on the first pitch, but the climbing was not too hard. I spotted a good crack to belay from so I stopped short at about 40 meters to belay Dan up.
Dan's pitch was the crux - delicate, precarious, and not really any pro.
Dan climbed past a pin, then decided to downclimb and set up a belay, making for another short pitch.
After making sure there was atleast one bomber pin in the belay I started the next pitch by traversing right to some thicker looking ice and up where I found some decent screws and great climbing. Sixty meters later I was at a sweet belay cave.
Dan's next pitch was an absolute gem, with a cool rock dihedral on the left and steep and mostly good ice to climb. This pic doesn't do the pitch justice, but it was one of the best ice pitches I've climbed.
The next pitch involved some sketchy steep traversing with tied off icicles for pro to get to a wallowing gulley where I belayed. Dan then led up what we thought would be a class 3 gulley, but Dan had to pull through a very akward 5.9ish snow filled chimney with no ice or pro to top out. I fell out of it following.
Well, we topped out in the dark, but the descent was pretty straight forward and probably easier than in the summer. Six pitches, 2 short ones, 4 long ones. Good times.
Gear Notes:
Blades, Arrows, Screws, Cams.
Approach Notes:
Trail is a highway