simpleton

Found an ice ax in the snow on the north slope of north twin. Hope you made it down safe.

A freind and I climbed Hogsback on Wednesday. Quite icy but nothing horrible. Neither of us have a ton of alpine climbing experience but we were both comfortable without a rope and were glad we decided against bringing it. Hammering pickets into the snow above the shrund would have been very difficult and time consuming in a place that I wasn't comfortable spending lots of time in. Going around the bergshrund was a little unnerving, it is obviously a lot bigger than it sometimes is and small slabs and crevasses are starting to form above it. Besides that, we witnesses a big rock fall to the east of us before we got on Hogsback. We were going to attempt going down the West Crater Variation but the gulley that we thought the route was on looked a little steep for our comfort level and lack of belay but I'm not sure we were looking at the right route. I would consider ourselves moderately fit. We started at about 1:30 and summited at about 6:30. Back at the parking lot a little after 10:30. Coming back down the lift attendant if we could ride the lift down and were shot down so don't even bother. I felt it definitely would have been worth it though to lug a pair of skis and boots up to at least the end of the chairlift, but maybe next time. Anyways, good luck, it wasn't very technical especially since we took it very slow and were careful about having good axe placements especially decending the pearly gates.