Mia

Trip: Argonaut Peak - NW Arete Trip Date: 06/18/2022 Trip Report: Approach There is a good amount of beta on the approach, including the bush wack/climbers trail. We stayed on the climbers trail until we hit the bottom of the boulder field/slide alder. We could have gone further right to avoid the alder, but we went through a few (literally) trees to skip the traverse. They're certainly unpleasant, but fine in that quantity. We filled up on water on at the edge of the snowfield, and were able to skip the slab rocks entirely via snow on the left. The finger reading to the notch was in good shape, sluffing a few predictable and small loose wets from the first in our party (4) total. The finger had no notable features, entirely snow. We did make the mistake of veering right near the top rather than left and paid for it with some exposed scrambling to get over to the notch. Climb Pitches are as advertised. Some of the better resources are: tumtum, jamie curtis 2015, jamie curtis 2017, and carl p 2017 which includes an awesome hand drawn route topo sheet! We took Jamie's advice and pushed P1 through the right facing corner to shorten P2. This ended up not quite necessary, we stayed fairly in line with the belayer over the face and the belay was in line (not really any rope drag). I believe our belay was further to climbers L than described, but it lined up great for rope drag and fed into P3 with ease. Unfortunately, I led the last pitch by headlight, so I don't recall too much of what happened on it, but I topped out the gully to an easy natural anchor. 2 in our party cleaned up the bivy sites (chipped ice away) and we went promptly to sleep. Summit The scramble to the summit is straightforward. Descent From the summit, go through the tunnel. Down climb to a notch, then scramble up the other side to the start of the snow field. It was a little steep (about 40deg) for the first few steps and we all put on aluminum crampons since the snow was hard in sections. Take a long, descending traverse down and to the right. From Jamie Curtis, the rap station is at: Lat=47.470342; Long=-120.858916 Rap 1: We did a double rope rappel to solid ground below the rings. Rap 2: We rapped from the tree down the overhanging face. We stopped at the first set of nuts (single rope rap distance) and had to replace the sling. This took some time and a climber above me on the rappel moved (to lookers right) around causing rock fall directly onto the anchor. Watch out for this- I'm fine but I did take a rock to the head. Big thanks to my helmet! Note if you do a double rope rappel, go past this first set of nuts to the second- it's better. Rap 3: Double rope rap down to the snow! (again, doable with single rope rappel, there's a well-placed station for you) The snow is trivial from here to colchuck glacier and down to the lake. Then it's trail to the car! Timeline Planned Actual Diff at step Trailhead 8:00am (0hr) 9:00am (0hr) +1hr Leave trail 9:30am (1.5hr) 10:30pm (1.5hr) 0hr Snow 12:00pm (2.5hr) 1:30pm (3hr) +0.5hr Notch 5:00pm (5hr) 3:30pm (2hr) -3hr Start Climb 5:00am SUN 5:00pm (1.5hr) time spent deciding to go for it n/a End Climb – 10:30pm (5.5hr) n/a Summit 12:00pm (7hr) 9:00am -1.5 for climb Start Rappels 1:00pm (1hr) 11:00am (2hr) +1.hr End Rappels 3:00pm (2hr) 12:45pm (1.75hr) -0.25hr Colchuck Col 4:30pm (1.5hr) 2:30pm (1.75hr) +0.25hr Colchuck Lake 5:15pm (.75hr) 3:15pm (.75hr) 0hr Parking Lot 7:45pm (2.5hr) 8:45pm (5.5hr) +3hr RESCUE Note: below colchuck lake we came across a hiker with a broken ankle and joined some others in carrying her out to the cars, adding a few hours to the descent. Gear Notes: Slings: 8 doubles, 6 singles +anchors Pro: full nut set, single cams 0.3-3 + doubles of 0.5, 0.75. If you can stand the weight, another #1 would have been great for use in anchors. Shoes: I used 3 season mountaineering boots, light crampons, and rock shoes. Pictures Slide Alder- in case you aren't familiar: Our bypass of slab rock: Snow finger: Photo from our P2 top: Where I topped out the route: Summit tunnel: Scrambling down after summit: Notch where we went up to gain the snowfield (just a couple steep steps then mellower): Descending the snow: Top of Rap#2 Walking out the snowfield after rappels: GPX Argonaut-2022-06-19.gpx Argonaut-2022-06-18.gpx

Nope, it's still very much under snow

Hmm, nope - not us! Hope the phone and owner get together again

Trip: Eldorado - Standard (Eldorado glacier) Trip Date: 05/13/2018 Trip Report: Went up Eldorado this past weekend (05/13-05/14) with one partner. First time for both of us. We had planned on giving the NW couloir a shot, but ended up bailing after an unexpectedly tiring approach day and late night getting to bed. Log crossing is quite in, look right after coming across the first bit. You'll know you've found the trail on the other side when you see the signpost. Trail is easy to follow (albeit steep and full of down trees) up to the boulder field. At the boulder field you more or less just go up. Starts being snow covered around 4800ft. The snow coverage is quite spotty with lots of holes forming. Crossed the arm into the Eldorado basin at 6,200ft - there is a clear path and two trees marking the crossing spot. Not sure how much longer it'll be in for. Crack is starting to break through at the bottom of the chute. Long, long, slog up all the mushy, slushy snow to the inspiration glacier. Ate dinner, melted snow for water and headed to sleep around 9:30pm. Took us just shy of 9 hours to get from the car to the camp: 2 hours on the trail, then a slow time through the boulder field, stopped for lunch and then pushed up, kicking slush the rest of the way. After a loud night of tent-flapping-in-wind, we woke up at 5:30 to harder, but not solid snow (didn't need crampons, wore them anyways / just in case) and followed the boot pack up towards summit. When we came over the ridge right before the knife edge, the wind hit us much harder than lower down, literally knocking my feet out from under me. We both wound up crouching, in self belay with axes to avoid being blown all the way over. We tried to find a route out of the wind, hmm'd and haa'd for a bit, and decided to turn around. Very frustrating, but when you need to balance on a ridge, you can't have wind knocking you off the ridge. Heading back down to camp I fell through to a crevasse (one leg and just hip deep, was able to roll over onto stable snow) which runs parallel to the boot pack. Watch out! Walking parallel to a crevasses does not give your rope team much opportunity to arrest your fall. The crevasse is somewhere between 20 and 30 feet deep, probably. There is another one open, but perpendicular to the path, just above the rocks. After all that adventure, we packed up and headed home, after screwing up the exit to the boulder field. All together a disappointing but fun, and beautiful weekend. Gear Notes: Rope for glacier travel and gear for (thankfully not-quite-necessary) crevasse rescue. Approach Notes: Snow starts just below 5,000ft. Boulder field is annoying. Snow bridges are failing and crevasses are opening above high camp.