Requiem for the Post-Modern World

[Ade]

This is one of the pictures on the CC homepage. Can anyone shed any more light on this route? Mitch perhaps?

Ade

 

[Alex]

Ade, I'm not sure how often Mitch reads, so here is the description he sent me. Requiem will be one of the many routes featured in our forthcoming guidebook to Washington State Ice Climbing...

Cheers, Alex

Requiem for the Post-Modern World - WI 5+ R/X

Length: 150'

First ascent: Mitch Merriman, Alec Gibbons 1/27/97

Approach: Drive north from Wenatchee on Hwy 97A and park one mile S. of Rocky Reach Dam.

Route: 150' of steep, thin, technical climbing and difficult protection. On the first ascent, substantial portions involved climbing on small mushrooms/cauliflower ears plastered onto rotten rock. Very cool. If

using a 50m rope, you must belay very high and risk falling ice or climb the route in two pitches, belaying in the cave 3/4 of the way up the route.

Descent: Walk off to the right.

[This message has been edited by Alex (edited 03-27-2001).]

[Retrosaurus]

It is named after a song by "Electric Mud", a high-voltage electric blues band that I was lucky enough to see in the Mangy Moose at the Jackson Hole ski area in February of 1993. This route rarely forms. It lies only a few miles north of Wenatchee. It is VERY roadside; almost zero approach time. Its formation is entirely dependent on sufficient surface melt in the feeder slopes visible above the climb. Most years it does not form at all. The rock of the cliff is terrible. There was no point on the climb at which you could just blast your tools in; there was just not enough ice. High Indiana Jones value. Maybe some year it will form fat and safer. There is a simple walk-off to the right and so the climb could be top-roped. I think it has had only one ascent.

Mitch

[Retrosaurus]

It is named after a song by "Electric Mud", a high-voltage electric blues band that I was lucky enough to see in the Mangy Moose at the Jackson Hole ski area in February of 1993. This route rarely forms. It lies only a few miles north of Wenatchee. It is VERY roadside; almost zero approach time. Its formation is entirely dependent on sufficient surface melt in the feeder slopes visible above the climb. Most years it does not form at all. The rock of the cliff is terrible. There was no point on the climb at which you could just blast your tools in; there was just not enough ice. High Indiana Jones value. Maybe some year it will form fat and safer. There is a simple walk-off to the right and so the climb could be top-roped. I think it has had only one ascent.

Mitch