Sunshine on Sunshine

[ckouba]

Took a shot at Sunshine on Saturday with KnowFear. The Eliot is dry and seems to be noticeably shrinking. We crossed on the lower portion which leads to a short, chossy, sucky scramble. Simple going to the base of Snowdome, which is showing some crevasses or glide cracks. Simple to navigate though.

 

Once to the top of Snowdome, we looked to the right (top of Coe) and left (top of Eliot) for a line on the glaciers around the first chunk of "rock," and neither way seemed to hold a path which connected. We opted to actually try the chossy-looking rib in front of us.

 

It was sucky and chossy but we pushed up it anyway to the snow slope above it and pulled up underneath the higher rock at the top of the Eliot and Coe.

 

Again both sides looked extremely broken up and above us was another chossy pile which was occasionally shedding some of its rocky burden. After dealing with the first choss-heap rock section and evaluating the glacial possibilities, we decided to turn around and call it a day.

 

We had contemplated an enormous horizontal traverse to gain Cathedral Ridge but opted against it as the snow was starting to soften and ball up, and both gaining and climbing the ridge looked like another choss-fest. We also had taken only screws and had no pickets to keep us out of the yawners below on the Coe.

 

So it turned out to be a nice day for a "hike" with great views through all the smoke.

 

Bottom line: the route could probably be forced, but you have to really, really want it.

 

Chris

[kurthicks]

CK,

Glad to hear you had the thought to turn around. i was going to go there last weekend too...how wierd. maybe we shall hit that thing up next year? I had a nice weekend at Spring Mountain...getting worked and sending the hardest routes i've ever done.