[TR] Bifrost Pass (Delusion, Frontier, Cornelia)- various 7/23/2005

[Don_Serl]

Climb: Bifrost Pass (Delusion, Frontier, Cornelia)-various routes

 

Date of Climb: 7/23/2005

 

Trip Report:

Andrew Rennie and I flew to Bifrost Pass on the northern fringe of the Waddington Range on the evening of July 23 and climbed in the area for the following 12 days. Details (with cross references to the Waddington Guide) follow.

 

We scrambled Pk 2560W [rte 5; pg 108] for exercise and to recce on the 24th - I quit at the "tricky" notch - perhaps there was more snow when the earlier ascent was made?

 

The east face of Delusion didn't look too appealing from 2560W, so we opted for the W ridge instead. This consisted of mostly scrambling on very nice, featured, solid rock, with 3 steps: #1 entailed a pitch of 5.8 (with an optional 10m 5.10 hand-crack that Andrew could not resist); #2 was mostly bypassed on the right; #3 was immediately below the summit and started with a 5.9 wide-crack to easier grooves (55m), then finished with a 10m steep right-facing 5.9 corner leading to a short 5.10 bulge, all on superb rock. We downclimbed the S face [rte 7]; the routeline on the upper part should be further right than it appears in the photo on pg 114 bottom.

 

We then recced the E face of Cornelia and Frontier. There's undoubtedly a way up thru the lower 100m of the E face, but there is then a cpl hundred more metres of steep slabby terrain, and the overall impression didn't strike me as very climbable - or perhaps I should say "enjoyable". (see pgs 136-137)

The E ridge on the E tower of Frontier (rt skyline pg 135 upper) had appealed to me from long ago, but on closer acquaintance the SE buttress (sun/shade line, same photo) looked like the far more solid and consistent line. This we climbed on the 27th.

 

The route starts with about 150m of scrambling - we belayed when the grooves started to get discontinuous. We belayed a cpl pitches to a prominent blocky ledge, above which the buttress steepens - there were goat tracks on the lower east ridge crest leading up to, then across this traverse! There were 7 or 8 pitches on the next section, with a fair amount of 5.8, a few 20m sections of easy ground, a cpl 5.9 cruxes, and one full-on pull-like-hell left-leaning crack past a bulge 5.10 crux towards the top. The crest then nearly levels for a ropelength, then the headwall looms - this went surprisingly easily, despite appearances - 5.9 at most, trending up and left - good face-climbing low down, then an angling crack system thru very solid rock. All that remained was to walk 70m to the previously unclimbed 2800m+ summit.

A 50m rappel got us down the headwall, then a very loose dyke/ledge led right (facing out) into the S-facing snow gully, which took us without complication back to the basin.

While our tower was generally sound, the main summit looked every bit as loose as the earlier parties made it sound - the routeline for #12 should traverse w-a-a-a-y left, nearly to the SW ridge, before making for the top.

We called the route "Miles From Ordinary", and we have the Corona photos to prove it!

 

We started for the W side of Cornelia on the 29th, but the weather looked threatening, and an opportune radio chat with Mike King confirmed expected deterioration the following day. We left the heavy gear at a col abt 45mins above camp, and got back to the tent just as the rain arrived. It POURED for the next 2 1/2 days, nearly without respite. An Amer Alp Inst party high on Waddington got 6 FEET(!) of snow during this storm - it was not pleasant, but at least we were in our base-camp tent, not bivved somewhere.

 

Once the weather cleared, we tramped up to the W side of Cornelia (very easy 3 hrs via the pass N of the mtn) to a lovely bivy spot with a sheltering rock buttress above and running water just 50m away. We attempted one of the fine rock pillars on the W side (actually, the upper half of which appears rising from the right to the subsidiary snow-summit in the middle of the photo on pg 137 upper), but after half a pitch of very hard 5.10, the inability to traverse into our "chosen" dihedral, looseness, and overhangs above forced a retreat. As consolation, we tramped up a still-nicely-frozen gully to the col above, angled up the steep NE-facing snow (facing in the photo), and did a pitch of rock and then a pitch of snow to the top of the subsidiary summit (abt 2900m; also previously unclimbed). We then sorta "4th classed" the ridge to the main summit in sorta 3 ropelengths - there was some nice secure dry-tooling and even one aid move on a piton to enliven the affair.

We descended S, then took off down the first snow-gully S of the W ridge - this (as usual) got complicated low down, but we downclimbed further on the rib to its left (S), then crossed right (W), trying to get back around to the bivy. We got forced quite a long way down, altho we stayed at least 200m above the glacier, then we found heathery ramps to traverse W-ward. Finally, by headlamp, we tramped back up heather, then scree, then snow about 400m to our bivy, arriving at midnite.

 

We tramped lazily back to basecamp the next morning, downed most (but not all) of our remaining (impressive) beer supply, and flew out to a great Laurie King breakfast on the morning of the 4th.

 

Gear Notes:

2 x 8.5mm X 60 ropes. about a dozen nuts. 6 to 10 cams to #3Camalot size - finger and hand sized were most useful. long, medium, and short Blades plus a cpl Lost Arrows (useful again and again!) and a baby angle. ice tool as alpine hammer.

 

Approach Notes:

Whitesaddle, of course...

Edited August 12, 2005 by Don_Serl