[TR] Wine Spires- Chablis, Pernod, Burgandy 9/5/2005

[colt45]

Climb: Wine Spires-Chablis, Pernod, Burgandy

 

Date of Climb: 9/5/2005

 

Trip Report:

eric8 and I were hoping to get up all four wine spires yesterday: the plan was to climb the standard route on Chablis, traverse to the Chablis-Pernod notch, climb the 5.9 south face pitch to Pernod's summit, go to the ground and climb Rebel Yell, descend to the Chianti-Burgandy notch, then climb the end of the corkscrew route up Burgandy. Well this was the plan anyway, but we had to settle for 3 out of 4. In retrospect we should have brought two ropes!

 

details:

From Burgandy col, we descended really loose dirt/scree. An ice axe was nice for this part. However this is the only part where an axe is handy, and our crampons remained strapped to our packs all day. There was a tiny bit of ice on the east side of the spires that we were able to walk around:

 

We then hiked over to the base of Chablis which involved a lot of scree-covered, occasionally icy 3rd/4th class. I found this to be pretty sketchy but it didn't slow Eric down at all. Eventually we reached the start of the climb.

 

The standard route up Chablis is a blast, with outstanding rock quality and super fun climbing. There is one section of unprotected 5.5 face climbing so it wouldn't be fun if 5.5 is your limit, but the climb was quite enjoyable and went by quickly.

 

The face pitch (up and right on knobs):

 

From the summit of Chablis we traversed a ropelength to the Chablis-Pernod notch (easy scrambling):

 

We then climbed up the south face of Pernod. I was intimidated by all the lichen on this pitch, so I turned the lead over to Eric who cruised up to the summit. The climbing is somewhat intimidating but extremely good, and if all the lichen were scrubbed off the pitch would be a classic anywhere.

 

We were making reasonably good time, but we had a lot of trouble getting down with one rope. After a couple of short rappels toward the Pernod-Chianti notch we didn't see any fixed anchors, so we traversed back across to Chablis and down-climbed the climbing route. This was pretty easy but time-consuming. Since neither of us really wanted to down-solo the 5.5 face section, we left a nut so that the second person could down climb it on toprope. Once we were back on the ground we had to down-climb the icy approach scramble to get back to our packs. This took me a really long time, as falling here would be really bad, but Eric again had no trouble! Apparently this sort of terrain gets easier when you're spending a lot of time in the mountains.

 

It was getting sort of late and we didn't want to start up Rebel Yell, as this would probably commit us to doing Burgandy too since Rebel Yell is supposed to require two ropes. Accordingly we scrapped this plan, and decided to do the North Face of Burgandy since that was supposed to be easy to descend with one rope. Since all the icy scrambling had drained much of my energy, I let Eric lead all the pitches.

 

NF Burgandy was a blast, with super fun easy climbing on solid rock up to a big ledge. From here we climbed straight up past fixed rap anchors to another big ledge. At this point there seemed to be several ways to go; we went up and left to the skyline which involved spectacular climbing past a bolt. Eric nearing the bolt:

 

We then rapped to the ground, which was easy with one rope. In fact, there is really no advantage to having a second rope on this route since that would just increase the chances of having the ropes get jammed when pulling them across the heavily featured rock.

 

We then hiked back to the car, which was without incident until it started to get dark and I got lost in the trees. Fortunately I was able to shout over to Eric who was still on the trail; I thrashed through the brush to find him retrieving the ice-cold beers that he had strategically stashed in the stream that morning. From here, a little more hiking and a long drive back finished off a fun day of climbing.

 

Gear Notes:

A second rope would be handy for Chablis.

[ken4ord]

Nice Job. Shit if I get back over to Washington I definitely have to make it over to the Wine Spires sometime. I kick myself for not getting over there when I had the opportunity.

[zoroastr]

Enjoyable T.R., and gr8 pics--Thanx!