[TR] Out-of-Date TR Gunn Peak -- OutGunned- Worthl

[JayB]

Climb: Out-of-Date TR Gunn Peak -- OutGunned-Worthless Gulley Failure Route

 

Date of Climb: 4/24/2004

 

Trip Report:

As befits the best ski-season I can remember, I have decided to tell the tale of one of the most incredible days I've ever logged on a pair of skis.

 

As-per the usual protocol, HappyCamper (Scott) and I arrived at Bronco's (Ryan's) house right on time - if not a bit early , and after transfering the mass of impeccably packed gear into Ryan's subcompact Toyata Prius hybrid, we set off for the trailhead and Gunn Peak. I had logged at least 10 hours of sleep the night before and had all of my gear packed and ready to go a week beforehand, so I was alert and extremely engergetic during the drive.

Things looked promising through the windshield, with plentiful snow, and no sign of loose rock, moss, gullies, and and/or an infinity of slide alder.

Because of my assiduous packing in advance of the trip, I was ready to go in just under 10 seconds.So we packed up, and headed for the goods approximately 45 seconds after turning off the ignigition.

We effortlessly crossed the river and in so doing displayed balance and grace that would have - literally - made the every last member Romanian Oympic Gymnastics team weep with envy. Shortly thereafer, we made good time and carefully skirted the patches of slide alder and made sure to give all of the choss filled gullies a wide berth, because lugging 185's and through that kind of shit would have sucked in a major way.

 

We turned around and took at look at the North Face of Baring, dismissively chuckled at the legions of posers who hyped up their weak-ass routes on what had to be one of the more trivial looking faces in the Cascades,

 

 

and continued up without ever complaining about the conditions or castigating ourselves for engaging in the manifest futility of such an endeavor.

 

When we arrived at the snowline, we were all pissed off because the approach hadn't even begun to make us breathe hard, let alone tap into our energy reserves - so we put the skins on and crushed the remaining approach in record time -scrupulously avoiding all breaks and maintaining a serious demeanor so as to insure success on our chosen objective.

 

 

Despite the fact that we had already eclipsed our turnaround time by time the descent route on Gunn was in site - the real reason we turned around was because the line just looked way to gay for us to bother with.

 

So we chose a suitable objective - the daunting 36 foot west face of the unnamed subpeak above us. We eschewed protection and soloed the perilous 25 degree snow face to the summit.

 

I wanted to savor the day's accomplishments for a moment or two atop the summit, but Ryan, being the sensible one, turned towards me with a wild look in his eye and screamed "THERE'S NO TIME!!!!!!!!!!" He was right of course - we still had the daunting 250 vertical foot descent to the top of the gulley waiting for us. The tension was high as we began the descent - as one false move would virtually guarantee a turn that was not competely satisfying - and none of us wanted to risk that.

 

After surviving the daunting descent, part of which required a pole plant - we returned to the descent route, once again using superior routefinding to avoid all loose rock, sludge, lichen, underbrush, minor-waterfalls, slide alder, and all of the other elemental nuisances that might have led lesser beings into the throes of mild-cluster on the descent.

 

We returned directly to the truck long before any concern about thrutching through slide debris in the dark had even begun to manifest itself in our head, and upon returning home I rode 10 miles to the gym and did 80 sets of powercleans with 225 pounds on the bar so that I would actually feel fatigued.

 

Gear Notes:

Should have borrowed some 225 downhill boards and old-school yellow Lange's for the approach/desent.

 

One-piece ski-suit with neon-accents may have also been useful.

[Bronco]

The guy jumping the rocks at the bottom of the gully in the last picture looks so fluid and skilfull, he must deadlift a lot!

 

Nice tr!

[sverdina]

...and here's a shot of your boot track up Pt. 5760 (taken day after). Yah, the entire area is just gay...touring blows & scenery sucks too.

 

[slothrop]

Rad.