Buckaroo Posted August 1, 2003 Posted August 1, 2003 Climbed it again on July 29-30-31. 2 weeks ago the bypass glacier was continuous all the way across the bypass route. When we climbed it, only about a 1/4 of it was left and it was in sections. With the hot weather it was calving off like a mad-dog. We did the direct start and crossed the exposure zone at about 7:00 am. By 9:00am a large section came off, by the time it got to where we had crossed it was in big chunks, but it looked like if you were lucky you could have maybe dodged them. 20 minutes later a huge section came off. It obliterated our crossing zone with a fusilade of different size ice chunks up to as big as a kitchen stove. We would have been smashed and knocked off the top of the lower headwall.... dead meat. There's still quite a bit of snow above the 14th pitch "gigantic bivy platform"(Becky), we made it there on the first day and were ECSTATIC to have snow to melt for water as we got cooked on the direct start with the hot weather. did the crossover descent, HEINOUS, and a climb in and of itself. There's a hidden canopied rock gulley to get off the bench below crossover and back into the basin that avoids about 500 vertical of bushwacking. took our time on the way back out through the basin, found quite a few pieces of the crashed plane, even an old leather shoe If I can find time I'll do a better TR and some pics Quote
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