jstreet Posted December 19, 2006 Posted December 19, 2006 (edited) I went to the Hidden Lake area again this weekend, this time with John Angulo and our objective was “This To Shall Pass” (WI-4). Two weeks earlier Glen Glover and I had been there and climbed the first 3 of 4 pitches of “Time Quake” (WI-3+) and noticed that “This To Shall Pass” was looking pretty good and last week another party reported climbing it and that it was fairly good. So off to lake Wenatchee we drove very early Sunday morning. We drove down the very very snowy Lake Wenatchee north shore road and passed electric crews hard at work restoring power to the area. We barely made it to the winter end of road parking area with 4 wheel drive engaged. Snow shoes were required immediately as we walked the untracked mile of road to the summer trail head. Many hours and much work breaking trail later we arrived at the upper basin above Hidden Lake. It was a winter wonderland and a sparkling powder cache with about 5 feet of snow on the ground and it was very cold. We worked our way thru the 18-24 inches of new snow across the open basin and up the steep snow slope to the base of the climb. The climb looked very snowy and lower angle than usual, perhaps WI-3+ rather than the usual WI-4. The climb is two pitches, 40-50 meters each. The ice turned out to be the worst I’ve encountered yet at this location. Lots of icicles, thin in places, snow mixed ice, hollow, and plenty of onion peel with generally some what poor protection. Lots of clearing, digging, and bashing was required to get sticks that didn’t feel like they would rip out… take me to some nice clean desert ice please! Thankfully the climbing was easy enough to make all this exciting and fun… a good learning experience …what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Below are a few photos of the ice and climbing and few more of scenery on the way to the ice. PS/ “Time Quake” (WI-3+, 4 pitches) definitely looked a bit worse than two weeks ago. The third pitch which only had small sections of open water/rock is now mostly wet rock but trying to reform. A number of ice falls came crashing down “Time Quake” while we were climbing “This To Shall Pass”. Edited December 19, 2006 by jstreet Quote
TrogdortheBurninator Posted December 19, 2006 Posted December 19, 2006 That looks like fun. Thanks for the TR. Quote
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