Dru Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 Climb: Manning Park-Go With the Flow 75m WI4-5 Date of Climb: 1/30/2006 Trip Report: Don S, Earthly (Scott), Stemalot (Steve) and I climbed Go With The Flow in Manning on Sunday. Nepopekum is also in albeit with a hole in the middle about 1/3 of the way up. GWTF is heavily snow covered with cruddy snice on the less than vertical parts, and good blue ice on the verticalparts. Don and Scott climbed a WI5ish pillar on the left while Steve and I climbed a WI4 on the right. Both parties climbed in 2 30m pitches and avoided the last 15-20m of lower angle to the top as it would have been an uphill wallow in deep snow over crud ice. The approach and descent were both entertaining with lots of headlamp trudging, a blizzard, falling-in-the-creek creek crossings, and a very slow drive out on an unplowed road with 8" of freshiez. Don and I both forgot our helmets The constant barrage of crud snice, ice chunks and spindrift was a bit scary. Enough spindrift was dumped down the climb that our packs at the base were fully buried. I lost a brand new 19cm BD Turbo at the base when it unclipped from my plastic racking biner. Reward for safe return but I honestly doubt it will ever be seen again with the amount of snow that fell on top of it. Snowshoes a bit better than skis for getting to the base but it was a real slog no matter what was used. Gear Notes: Screws and so on. Approach Notes: Deep pow. Bit of crust in the forest balanced out by the number of deadfalls to climb over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoshK Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 You'll never hit your life goal of 30k posts if you keep climbing ice without a helmet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted January 30, 2006 Author Share Posted January 30, 2006 It's easy to say "I will always wear a helmet when I ice climb" sitting in front of a computer, but it is harder to practice that when you have slogged 3.5 hours to the base of a climb and realize you forgot your helmet. Do you just tell your partners "I don't want to climb now" or do you accept the increased risk so you can salvage something from the day? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dechristo Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 Sometimes, the helmet you're born with must do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoshK Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 Apparently the bad sarcasm was lost. Hey, but if anybody knows about sitting behind a computer, it's you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted January 30, 2006 Author Share Posted January 30, 2006 I prefer to sit in front of a computer where I can see the screen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DirtyHarry Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 You go to war with the hemet you've got, not the helmut you wish you had. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmace Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 Is this the stated length in the guide? I cant remember but I thought it was less which is why I was confused when Earthly and I climbed it last year. good on you for gettin out Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted January 30, 2006 Author Share Posted January 30, 2006 The stated length in the guide is too short. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordop Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 RIIIGHHHTT, like there's actually any real ice out there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stemalot Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 the side Dru and I did was lots of fun! 2/3 way up, there's a cool little cave behind a curtain of ice. I climbed out of the cave by steming on the curtain (I wanted to find out how strong it was and it was solid!.) Don and Earthly did the impressive ice pillar...I think overall they got more of the good ice then we did. the swimming in powder was really fun too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrogdortheBurninator Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 Anybody have any photos? Must rekindle ice stoke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmace Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 Last year crappy, disposable camera Bigger size Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted January 30, 2006 Author Share Posted January 30, 2006 I have photos in a wet camera at home Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
earthly Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 wet? aw, c'mon dru, wringing out my draws only filled a nalgene... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted January 31, 2006 Author Share Posted January 31, 2006 Earthly makes the approach Nepopekum from the trail on the way to GWTF Foreshortened view of route and Earthly's head Don does some zamboni work looking for ice underneath the junk. Bigger versions of thumbnails are in the gallery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stemalot Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 hum...I say half of the route was cover in snow yesterday. we started climbing where the climber is in that photo (Jesse's)...LOTS of snow! the upper part of the climb, above the big hole in upper centre photo, was covered with knee deep snow...not much fun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted January 31, 2006 Author Share Posted January 31, 2006 If you look at Jesse's photo we belayed above the first visible ice in that shot which was, in fact, more of a ski slope than an ice climb this year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don_Serl Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 Last year crappy, disposable camera Bigger size not so, dru. we belayed at the base of the ice hose on the right - the ice in the photo with the climber on it was an insubstantial-looking curtain this year. both Scott and I, and you and Steve, climbed the narrowish righthand ice flow; I moved left to belay so that Scott could lead the centre of the fall, which consisted of two sequential columns, each about 10m high - these show in Jesse's photo as tiers of icicles, left of a couple small exposures of rock. Steve continued directly on up, climbing the right side of the upper tier, right of the exposed noses of rock. As for the issue of length, the guide says 30m, which I got from the FA party. Perhaps they soloed the lower section (our first pitch) and "counted" only the "main" pitch? The correct information should certainly be around 60m, perhaps even more if you climbed all the way to the very top of the ice - we omitted the upper, heavily snow-shrouded, low angle stuff. As for the difficulty, while the ice was typically Coastal and "tricky", there is no way this was grade 5. The steep sections are only 8m-10m long, and nothing is dead-vertical. (Admittedly, we TR'ed thru a half-metre roof for "sport" after completeling the "real" climb, but that was not mandatory...) The guide says 4+; that's accurate. [P.S. Best approach by far is in the trees right of the avvy chute under the route. Drew and I flailed up on our snowshoes; Scott and Steve abandoned their skis just above the creek and postholed - not too bad; the old snow had a bit of a crust under the trees. 1 1/2 hrs from creek to route - a strenuous way to gain 200m!] cheers, don Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted January 31, 2006 Author Share Posted January 31, 2006 Maybe this will make things clearer? red dashed line = current snow level green arrow = our approach blue X = our belay and packs purple - route you and Scott climbed. I didn't climb it so if you say WI4+ I guess it was. orange - route Steve and I climbed. Belays marked In neither case was it a full 30m to rap sO i guess total length was more like 50-55m than 60m but there was easily another 20-30m of lower angle wallow to the top of the route from there. Interesting that Brent told me it was WI5 and a full pitch the day after he climbed it and then told you it was WI4+ and 30m when you were writing the guidebook. Then again he told me that Skaha was on the direct route from Jasper to Bella Coola once too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnkelley Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 WI4+ or WI5? There's hardly any difference there anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmace Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 Just incase any one is thinking about hitting this, mannng park reported 75 cm of new yesterday, thats about 2.5 feet so... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted January 31, 2006 Author Share Posted January 31, 2006 Also see Ted's pics from last year: http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/436918/an/0/page/7#436918 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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