Alasdair Posted April 28, 2003 Posted April 28, 2003 Ade and I climbed this route on Saturday. Route was in OK shape, but the ice was a little rotten in places. Fun route. Left car at about 3 am. Hiked to base of peak (via a somwhat roundabout way due to route finding error in the dark. Dumped snowshoes at base of route and then headed up just as the sun hit it. Simulclimbed to the first step, and then roped up. Ade led first step and then the crux in one 60m pitch. First step was crappy ice over a boulder "chockstone" in the gully. Only a couple of moves. All ice on this de-laminated as I put weight on to it, and there is now no longer ice on this part of the route. The crux open book had a fairly solid covering of ok ice with some rotton sections. Most of this crux could be climbed with very little ice in it by using the rock on the left side. I led the third pitch with one well protected small step. Simul climbed to summit, with mostly crappy protection. Desended by rapping strait off summit in to a coulior that meets the regular decent coulior about 100 ft down from the ridge. Downclimbed the rest of the way to cliffband and then made two rappels, one off of a really crappy dead tree anchor into the SW basin. Wallowed in snow for endless hours getting back to the snowshoes. Back at car about 4:00pm. Snowshoe postholing sucks ass. Went to David's cabin and met with the rest of the CC.com crew and drank beers. Quote
Ade Posted April 28, 2003 Posted April 28, 2003 Better approach would be to head West on the road for about a mile to the turnout on the N side of the road and head straight up into the basin E of the peak as per Beckey III. Rather than traversing from the trailhead directly. Certainly on snowshoes traversing is no fun, maybe on skis this is better. The sun and hopefully cold nights will cause the upper snowslopes to consolidate but may bake the crux smears further. We rapped off the summit to gain the gully but I think you're supposed to traverse slightly S down the ridge to get into the top of the W gully proper. Bounce test those rap anchors. My snowshoes nearly ended up on David's campfire. Quote
fleblebleb Posted April 28, 2003 Posted April 28, 2003 Bet that was the same rotten dead tree I (and probably everybody else here that's climbed Cutthroat) rapped off. Scary. Silly me, I thought you guys had climbed something else on Cutthroat... Quote
wayne Posted April 29, 2003 Posted April 29, 2003 Nice work guys. Could be it for alpine spring ice? Quote
Ade Posted April 29, 2003 Posted April 29, 2003 (edited) Crappy tree bounce tested to about 200lbs and new orange cord added. wayne1112 said: Nice work guys. Could be it for alpine spring ice? Nope... Not if I have anything to do with it Edited April 29, 2003 by Ade Quote
JoshK Posted April 30, 2003 Posted April 30, 2003 Ade said: Better approach would be to head West on the road for about a mile to the turnout on the N side of the road and head straight up into the basin E of the peak as per Beckey III. Rather than traversing from the trailhead directly. Certainly on snowshoes traversing is no fun, maybe on skis this is better. The sun and hopefully cold nights will cause the upper snowslopes to consolidate but may bake the crux smears further. We rapped off the summit to gain the gully but I think you're supposed to traverse slightly S down the ridge to get into the top of the W gully proper. Bounce test those rap anchors. My snowshoes nearly ended up on David's campfire. Yeah, when Paco and I did it we walked down the road for a while do that turnout and clearing and then headed straight up the south shoulder of cutthroat. It's a very easy approach this way. Quote
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