[TR] Millenium Wall - n/a 03/17/2019

[montypiton]

Trip: Millenium Wall - n/a

Trip Date: 03/17/2019

Trip Report:

avalanche paranoia convinced Kyle Flick and me to scale back our ambitions and just run a couple laps on Millenium Wall today.  Ice was fat, plastic, basicallly superb, and Millenium is an avalanche-safe venue --- which is good, because we saw debris depositions in places that in forty winters here, I'd never identified as avalanche paths.  four significant debris depositions just in the switchbacks above the Snow Creek Trailhead!  While climbing, we watched slabs peel every few minutes from the the summit area of Snow Creek Wall -- White Fright might as well have been named Old Faithful.  Besides what we could see happening on the Wall, we heard,  repeatedly over a course of three hours, numerous major roars from the Toketie Lake vicinity.   We were early enough to climb in shadow, but as soon as Millenium came into sun (noonish) we headed for the parking lot.    some very unusual avalanche activity this year --- maybe a good year to be more conservative than usual.

Gear Notes:
ice tools, crampons, sscrews, rope

Approach Notes:
significant avalanche debris deposits over the trail switchbacks immediately above the Snow Creek Trailhead... trail is firm in morning, but we were post-holing coming down at 1300.