[TR] Strobach Mt- Sad Ce' Bu & Sudden Change of Plan 2/14/2004

[iceslut]

Climb: Strobach Mt-Sad Ce' Bu & Sudden Change of Plan

 

Date of Climb: 2/14/2004

 

Trip Report:

Sastrugi, myself and two seattleites Robert and Greg met at the tieton river rd/hwy 12 junction at about 10 pm on friday. we got to the snow park and crawled into bivy sacks right away. an hour later two campers filled with snowmobilers arrived and made a huge racket making the 4:20 am alarm more difficult than necessary. since 2 weeks ago sastrugi and i slogged around gettin' some beta, the approach was quite straightforward on skis. we essentially used the p/n approach with the variation involving FR 611. along the way we picked up another portland fellow named peter who planned to solo toprope some routes. even with the approach dialed, the trip from car to climbs took about 4 hours. not a bad bushwack, but definitely an agressive workout!

 

sudden change of plan and sad ce'bu were both in, although i suspect they have seen better years. me and sastrugi decided to lead sad ce'bu while peter offered to lead sudden change if robert would follow. (hopefully robert will post the relevant climb info for sudden change.) the first short section of sad ce'bu was fairly easy, though i ran out of ice near the top and was forced to utilize the available foliage to reach the ledge. since the climbing had just begun, i thought i would try to reach the cave described in the WA ice guide and belay from there. i started up the steep section and found it pumpy, but solid. after about 30 ft, i realized that i was left with one screw and the cave was clearly out of reach. i tried in vain to find some sort of gear combo that i could utilize for a solid belay anchor, but nothing seemed bomber enough. at one point, i found myself sitting in a little hole in the center of the flow with my legs dangling below me. i knew that if sastrugi fell for any reason, i would be yanked right out. after some f@*!ery, i finally had sastrugi lower me down on my last screw to the ledge. he grabbed some more screws and climbed to me and then continued up to the cave. as belays go, this one rates high up there. the rest of the route looked good, but we didn't know what was happening with the remainder of our crew and decided we should rappel down. we wanted to be at the road by dark, and our turnaround time was very near. as we were setting a rappel anchor of screw and big icicle, we heard our friends above yelling that they were goin' to rappel. i got off using our anchor, then the three of them used a fixed 100-m line that peter left for the next day.

 

we left peter to set up his camp and headed back on our route. even with skiis, the route to the road wasn't much better than the trip in and we were very tired. we reached the parking lot at about 7 pm the drive back to portland went well. (apparently the drive to seattle was more challenging...details?)

 

i have to give a big cheers to greg....he busted his arse all the way and because of time limitations, did not get to climb. we owe him big.

[Alpinfox]

Nice TR Iceslut; thanks for posting it! Isn't Strobach in Washington?