[TR] Colchuck Lake- 1/15/2005

[ivan]

Climb: Colchuck Lake-

 

Date of Climb: 1/15/2005

 

Trip Report:

2 friends of mine, including the Iranian-Sensation, the Terror of Tehran, got tickets to fly in from Virginia this past Friday. originally the forecast was for good weather for 4 days, so i was gonna do a mt. hood tour-de-force of the classics, but then the weather went all...well, fukit, you saw what it did.

 

anyways, decided friday morning when they arrived that dragontail or colchuck looked to be the best of the worst, so we made the pilgrimage to leavenworth. came the closest i've yet been to death in my climbing days just south of seattle; missed the sign for the i90 turnoff until the last second, did a 4 lane merge to the right; at the last second a concrete divider appeared seperating the exit lane from the rest of the interstate - i pulled the helm hard to starboard and missed 70 mph grim death with 3 pairs of ice-tools from the truck bed flying through my cranium by a fraction of a foot.

 

headed up the stuart lake road aroudn 2 pm. incredibly cold, sugary snow with no trail quickly made itself apparant. hateful work once at the trailhead. very slow time w/ big packs. only made it past the second bridge and the start of the climb up to the lake when it began obvious it was time to stop (niether of the va boys had led headlamps and the batteries for their incandescents were lasting only an hour - very slow progress anyway and the hill looked extremely demoralizing). camped by stuart creek in 5 degree temps. discovered water had found its way into one of the 2 fuel bottles and choked everythign w/ slush, the other was being bitchy and unpleasant to touch = cold dinner. water bottle in my sleeping bag leaked over night and for the rest of the trip the bottom of my down bag was one nasty mass of clumped together, frozen feathers.

 

the walk up to colchuck next morning sucked! still very cold, very light, sugar snow that made the steep sections loose and agonizing, especially w/ a pack. made only 300 ft/hour progress. began snowing by the time we reached the lake, which was frozen solid. at this point, w/ the weather, next day forecast and a deep paranoia as to the avi conditions in the couliors with new snow on top of shit, decided to focus on climbing the ice floes on the east side of the lake instead. walked across the totally frozen lake and made camp on the ice by the shore close to jaberwocky tower. used an axe to hack through 6 inches of ice to get water as fuel was limited now.

 

lots of nice ice by the lake. a good wide, topropable practice area below and to the right of jaberwocky - about 50 feet high - served to introduce them that had never swung an icetool before the basics. spied a fantastic flow that leads up the left side of jaberwocky, 2-3 pitches, then turns to mixed trees, slabs and could be taken the rest of the way to the summit. bunch of other random shit all over the place, none worth an entire pilgramge up that baatan trail, but fun if you happen to be there and have the time.

 

snowed strait through from saturday afternoon to sunday afternoon with an increasing wind. climbed more practice ice and made the long walk back down to the car and gustav's. ran into justinrr who was heading solo up to the lake in the dark, but not another soul in the area the whole week. don't know how long our trail will last but christ we fucking earned it. feel like an asshole doign all that work then not getting to climb anythign real. still, it was the right call. while the avi conditions at asgard didn't look bad (actually not very much coverage at the moment, w/ lots of terrain poking through), the weather sucked balls and the couliors were waterfalls of sugar snow. guess i'll be returning once again.

 

finally, i left my watch in the tent and apparently it fell out when it was being put into aarash's pack. if anybody finds it before the summer comes and it drops forever into the bottom of lake colchuck let me know and i got a case of beer for you.

 

 

Gear Notes:

don't bring contaminated fuel

 

Approach Notes:

snow, snow, shit snow

Edited January 18, 2005 by ivan

[Winter]

Good work getting out. Were you able to drive to the trailhead or how close did you get?

[Chriznitch]

so are your friends ever coming back?

[ivan]

the road is plowed to 8 mile campground, but from there you have to hoof it. the snow was deep and soft from the beginning of the road, and the dirt road itself protected by a large berm of plowed snow. 'bilers can go all the way up to the trailhead which makes me really wanna buy one.

[Ade]

Sleds are aid.

[Crackman]

Perfect! You wouldn't want your friends to go back without anything less than the full experience. Oh and next time you head out into such pleasant conditions, make sure to bring the wife and kid along for a relaxing family outing.