WR Prusik

[Gary_Yngve]

Three of us climbed the West Ridge of Prusik on Saturday. The route was in great shape -- snow-free except for a few ledges on the north face. We hauled boots and ice axes up, which were very useful on the 40-degree snow for the traverse back to the pass. We used two 60m rappels to get down, with the first being the full ropelength.

 

We came in and out through Asgard Pass. Colchuck Lake is rapidly melting out, though the lakes in the upper basin are frozen solid. Flotation was nice to have in the upper basin.

 

Saw two folks on Triple Cs... an avy came down the first couloir after they had passed it. Heard later that they bailed because of the unstable snow. Saw/heard lots of other avys...

[boonecounty]

Way to go out there and get it early season! How is the south face looking?

[fleblebleb]

Nice. That's a burly day trip, especially with snow cover. Did you bivi? Where?

[Gary_Yngve]

Whoops, hope I didn't mislead anyone... we hiked up to Colchuck Lake Friday evening, camping there, and camped at Asgard Pass Saturday night. We decided to make the trip comfortable as opposed to yet another "long day." We had enough supplies to last us through Monday (we planned to spend another day playing around up there), but we came back Sunday because the snow was soft, the skies were cloudy, one of us had a cold, and we felt that the trip was already a success having summited Prusik.

[slothrop]

Nice job, Gary! Sorry we missed you guys up there. When did you come out on Sunday? We made it back to the trailhead at 6.30pm that day. Saturday we lazed around the lake and Sunday morning we went up the Colchuck Glacier.

 

We met three groups who were up there to climb Triple Couloirs and all of them turned around. The runnels looked completely gone.

[Jens]

slothrop said:

We met three groups who we up there to climb Triple Couloirs and all of them turned around. The runnels looked completely gone.

 

Definitely a better weekend for cragging. My weather radio said that the freezing level was supposed to get up to 13,000 feet.

[Gary_Yngve]

We lazily slept in late on Sunday (got up at 8 AM) and got back to the cars in the early afternoon. We saw your car parked on our drive out and we considered stopping to leave a note, but we were too lazy.

[iain]

That was us on Triple C's. It sucked.

[slothrop]

iain, were you the one with or without skis? I was there in the blue tent with my girlfriend, I think we met you and your partner at the trailhead.

[iain]

the one w/o skis. nice to put a face to a name.

[Gary_Yngve]

Are you the top dot or the bottom dot?

 

[iain]

depends if we are going up or down in that picture. either way, thanks for the picture nice work on prusik. amazing how many people know about cascadeclimbers in that area. basically everybody we met.

[Norman_Clyde]

WARNING: THREAD DRIFT

Did you guys have a permit from way back in 2002? Or did you go for the lottery on the day you arrived? I have a few days free over 4th of July and might consider the Enchantments, but I did not reserve a weekend this year and probably have a snowball's chance in of getting an upper Enchantments spot on 4th of July weekend. (No, I'm not considering going bare, Caveman and the rest of you.) Who would care to speculate on the crowd at the Leavenworth ranger station on Saturday July 5th at 6 AM?

[catbirdseat]

Barry, you have a pretty good chance getting a permit on a weekday. Usually no lottery needed, except Friday-Sunday. Permits not required until after June 15.