[TR] Tumwater Canyon - Drury Falls Attempt 2/2/2007

[Doug_Hutchinson]

Trip: Tumwater Canyon - Drury Falls Attempt

 

Date: 2/2/2007

 

Trip Report:

Ben Hargrove and I attempted Drury Falls last Friday but retreated at the base of the upper tier due to warm temps and high objective hazard. Despite the bailing, it was a great day in the hills.

 

The ice in Leavenworth was the best that anyone could remember for years and Friday was one of the coldest days of the season. However, an inversion during the early part of last week meant that the elevations of Drury and higher were seeing above freezing temps while the Icicle and Lake Wenatchee were still way cold. We awoke at 0315 to temps in the teens, with visions of hard, brittle ice covering the extremely-chubby-looking falls.

 

Ben secured an open kayak and an inflatable raft for the river crossing. He shuttled packs across in the kayak

 

 

while I traveled slow and light in the Costco Club 300 raft.

 

A skin on ice on the far shore would have been the death of my Go-Lite style watercraft if Ben did not spend some time breaking a channel in the ice to the bank. Pics from the afternoon return crossing:

.

 

 

We got from the river to the base of the first pitch in a little over two hours at a pretty mellow pace, even with going up the wrong drainage (the herd path led to the remains of the Pencil) and having to descend about 600 feet into the correct (climber's left) main drainage. The going was probably as good as it gets since there was a good and somewhat frozen boot pack much of the way. Of note, was that the approach crossed over avy debris most of the way up.

 

The first pitch was wet (but climbable) but we decided to skip it by climbing around and left on easy ice and steep snow to spare the ropes (and us) from getting soaked.

 

The second pitch was a waterfall with occasional calving ice riding the rapids for a nice sound effect. Pitch 2 pic:

 

We avoided this pitch by soloing a pitch of WI2 in the main drainage to the left while beginning to get blasted by ice pellets showering from above. We traversed across the upper basin to the base of the upper tier.

 

By now (around 0900), the sun was beaming directly on the route and we were roasting - temps had to be close to 40s.

 

The upper falls was white and not the hard ice we had pictured. The "white lenses" reported by Rat was lower-angled snice surrounding more vertical water ice.

 

The high temps were a concern but I was encouraged as I soloed a steep pitch of snice to get to the water ice since at least the snice was solid enough to get good sticks. This was important since it looked like half the climb would be on the snicey shit and not the steeper ice.

 

With me at the base of the first WI4 pitch and Ben on the snow slope below we had a 15-minute yelling conversation about the weather, the ice (which was melting down on me which created a nice chilling effect after the oven-like approach) and the increasing rain of ice pellets that I could not avoid. It was basically getting too warm and two much crap was raining down over the entire first pitch to expect much better than a 50/50 chance of not getting nailed but something sizeable. The ice was dripping water but was hard enough to climb. Climbers with more balls could have sent the thing in these conditions but we decided to avoid getting killed to climb another day.

 

Sun is not a good thing on this climb since it points directly at the ice from sunrise to late morning. I would pray for overcast conditions if you attempt the route. Icefall seems like an almost constant hazard on this climb which would obviously be mitigated by much colder temps.

 

Since the climb has looked fat for at least three weeks now and there was at least several sets of tracks up the drainage, I have to ask - has anyone sent this thing this year?

 

Descent beta - descending climber's right and rapping to a huge snow ramp that brings you back to the upper basin looked straightforward. From trees located skier's right above pitch two, you do one 160' rap down to a tree located on the side of the cliff and about 30 feet rapper's right of the plumb line. In the dark, it would be hard to see this tree and one would probably assume that they could reach the snow field above pitch one, which is another 100 feet below this tree. Another long rap off a dead tree (located about 5 feet from a nice, live tree - way to preserve the live tree!) skier's right of the top of pitch one brings you down to the drainage out. The approach and deproach were a lot easier than we expected.

 

 

 

 

We celebrated our failure the way we celebrate success - by getting nice and drunk. The next day we climbed the best ice either have been on this season, super hard and fun, located a lot lower than Drury in the Tumwater high on Icicle Ridge across from Clems Holler - go figure...

[Buckaroo]

""...we decided to avoid getting killed to climb another day.""

 

Good call, it was too warm

 

Ice climbing when it's this warm is like going up when avi hazard is extreme

 

2 2 1100 34

 

2 2 2200 45

 

 

MM/DD Hour Temp Wind Wind Wind Wind Hour Total Total

 

------------------------------------------------------------

2 2 500 21 -0 1 4 37 0 0 42

2 2 600 21 -0 4 7 12 0 0 41

2 2 700 24 0 4 7 15 0 0 41

2 2 800 28 -0 3 5 333 0 0 41

2 2 900 29 0 2 4 185 0 0 41

2 2 1000 33 -0 2 6 155 0 0 40

2 2 1100 34 0 1 4 157 0 0 39

2 2 1200 32 -0 0 3 359 0 0 40

2 2 1300 33 -0 0 3 317 0 0 39

2 2 1400 33 0 1 3 53 0 0 40

2 2 1500 28 0 1 3 352 0 0 40

2 2 1600 30 0 3 9 81 0 0 41

2 2 1700 36 2 7 13 42 0 0 42

2 2 1800 39 0 6 12 64 0 0 42

2 2 1900 40 -0 2 6 282 0 0 41

2 2 2000 42 0 6 11 291 0 0 41

2 2 2100 44 1 7 13 289 0 0 42

2 2 2200 45 3 11 24 297 0 0 41