[TR] Joffre- Flavelle-Lane 7/24/2005

[Ade]

Climb: Joffre-Flavelle-Lane

 

Date of Climb: 7/24/2005

 

Trip Report:

 

Climbed the Flavelle-Lane on Joffre yesterday (Sunday). Soft snow on the glacier made going slow on the approach. The lower step in the glacier is still passable on the left but requires a bit of route finding. The schrund below the Central Couloir can be crossed by heading climbers right.

 

The route itself is six or so pitches of rock and then some mixed ground and snow slopes above where the route joins the Central Pillar. The upper rock pitches are still wet, we avoided the final one, opting for snow instead. At least two of the pitches feature very compact rock which is hard to protect.

 

Descent via the SE face route. You can avoid descending snow all the way to the glacier by sticking to the spur on the (skier's) left hand side of the final descent couloir.

 

Gear Notes:

Standard alpine rack, KBs might have been helpful.

[Zoran]

Good job!

[jordop]

Ade, from your lack of enthusiasm it kinda sounds like there isn't much of a recommendation for this route?

[Dru]

Maybe someone should have listened to the crazy Pole?

 

Climb: Joffre-Flavelle-Lane

 

Date of Climb: 8/12/2004

 

Trip Report:

Joffre in the summer in just a choss pile. even worst candian rockies choss has nothing on this mountain. flavell-lane is just bunch of stacked up blocks with moss thrown on the top of it. central pillar looks like the same deal, but at much harder grade.

australian gully doesn't have any snow in it. used the south-east face descent. nothing like described in the guide. so here is the betta for the descent. if there is snow- use the australian colouir. if not- follow the ridge facing Matier. just walking and a bit of scramble will bring you towards the cliffs. go to the climbers left and there is an anchor. don't go to visible one on the slab- there is no safe way of getting to it. we put in one right above a chimney on the s-w side of the mountain. from there 3 30m raps bring you to the ledge (chock stone and 2 kb). follow this ledge to a little col and drop onto glacier. from there just walking.

gullies looked like hell, a lot of rockfall all over the place.

technically not a hard route, but to put it mildly- very unpleasant

 

Gear Notes:

starndard rack, bring a few pitons (kb's)

[specialed]

Nice job Ade!!!!

[Ade]

My report was a bit time constrained. I wouldn't say it was the finest route I've done but I think Bob is overstating his case. I thought that the hard to protect sections were far more "memorable" than the loose ones. The rock isn't that loose. To put it another way I'd climb it again but it wouldn't be my first choice of routes to repeat.

 

We descended the SE face and didn't need to rap at all. You can walk lots of it and downclimb a few sections. There's one very short section to get around one of the blocks at the very top of the descent. There's a rap anchor on the N side but you only need to get to a ledge ten feet down. We just downclimbed and clipped the anchor as a belay.

Edited July 26, 2005 by Ade

[glassgowkiss]

i think the choss was covered by the snow in your case. there was a solitary snow patch at the very top on a flat ledge. from the glacier to the top and back to the glacier we did the whole thing in rock shoes. yeah, looking at the picture we fucked up on the descent and went down south buttress- go figure.