jstreet Posted February 13, 2007 Share Posted February 13, 2007 (edited) On Sunday, John Angulo and myself decided to take a chance and go take a look around the upper end of the Alpental valley to see if anything had survived the week long warm spell. We theorized that "The Source Lake Line" might survive because it’s relatively high in a very cold basin and was very fat. We kept our expectations low. As we drove the final stretch of I-90 towards the pass there were significant remains of road side ice; a good sign. As we proceeded on snowshoes in the lower Alpental valley all the small ice crags were mostly intact; a very good sign. At source lake we looked straight up the leftward fall line to the high cliffs and we could see "Flow Reversal" WI 5 R/X looking relatively complete and possibly climbable. We could also see a nice relatively long (1-2 pitches?) moderate flow about 100 yards to the left of "Flow Reversal" that I'm not sure is normally there that looked climbable. We couldn’t yet see “The Source Lake Line” so with much anticipation we worked our way up towards the high cliff alcove that holds the route. We jumped for joy when the route came into view because it was continuous from top to bottom and looked intact enough to climb safely. The ice turned out to be a bit mushy, rotten, and hollow in places but overall it was definitely reasonable. We climbed the steeper direct finish (left side). Here are some photos… The climb... yahoo! it's still intact Best action shoot... Jeff makes wild moves near the bottom of the pillar Preping in a safe area near the base of the route View out over snow lake divide area Jeff starts up the route Cozy mid point belay alcove Super satisfying solid belay anchor Tools of the trade parked in belay alcove at the base of the pillar pitch John relaxes at the belay alcove Jeff leaves the comfort of the alcove to start up the pillar Up the pillar and soon out of view of the belayer Jeff belaying at the top of the route Edited February 14, 2007 by jstreet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted February 13, 2007 Share Posted February 13, 2007 phat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Weekend_Climberz Posted February 13, 2007 Share Posted February 13, 2007 W00T Those are some keen photo's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrogdortheBurninator Posted February 13, 2007 Share Posted February 13, 2007 Is this some sort of Emperor's New Clothes thing? I can't see the pictures. Guess I'm not worthy. Nice work nonetheless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Weekend_Climberz Posted February 13, 2007 Share Posted February 13, 2007 Must be you, I can see them okay :tup: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhyang Posted February 13, 2007 Share Posted February 13, 2007 Sweet pics. Gearhead question - what are those red tools ? DMM Rebels ? How do you like 'em ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G-spotter Posted February 13, 2007 Share Posted February 13, 2007 I can't see the pics either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jstreet Posted February 14, 2007 Author Share Posted February 14, 2007 Sweet pics. Gearhead question - what are those red tools ? DMM Rebels ? How do you like 'em ? They are DMM Rebels, I've been using a pair for the past 3 weeks, which Marmot Mountain Works of Bellevue and DMM graciously loaned me to demo. The jury is still out but so far I'm finding them very light and nimble with a good head weight and center of balance. They have interesting ergometric handles with built in pinky rest/knuckle guard and built in adjustable trigger finger rests. They seem super well built and look sexy as hell. I've been using a borrowed pair of Petzel Qaurks for most of the season and I'm having a hard time deciding which tools I like better. I kind of feel like the Quarks rounded handles are more comfortable than the Rebels pistol grip shaped handles... DMM Rebels... bad ass and sexy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jstreet Posted February 14, 2007 Author Share Posted February 14, 2007 Hey thanks everybody. It was really fun going up there on a chance and then lucking out. And there's more ice up there for everybody. Those other routes we saw looked interesting. To bad we are going to have only marginal cold weather thru the week and another melt down over the coming weekend. Keep your fingers crossed, maybe it wont happen. Here's my plan for dealing with this: A) Learn how to mix climb B) Head for the HIGH alpine ice routes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pup_on_the_mountain Posted February 14, 2007 Share Posted February 14, 2007 (edited) I couldn't see the photos either, but figured out what was wrong (the '\' had to be changed to '/' in your html code). Here are the pics.. Good job, and purty pics . Edited to add: Looks like jstreet has fixed the problems in his original post. Pictures have been deleted from this post. Edited February 14, 2007 by pup_on_the_mountain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jstreet Posted February 14, 2007 Author Share Posted February 14, 2007 Hey thanks for figuring out my picture problem. Now I know what to be careful about in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Weekend_Climberz Posted February 14, 2007 Share Posted February 14, 2007 I couldn't see the photos either, but figured out what was wrong (the '\' had to be changed to '/' in your html code). Here are the pics.. Good job, and purty pics . I bet you are using something silly like FireFox or Opera, huh?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pup_on_the_mountain Posted February 14, 2007 Share Posted February 14, 2007 Yeah.. Mozilla from a Linux (Fedora Core to be exact) machine. Prefer free stuff that actually is better than Windoze, for which you've to shell out the mint . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pup_on_the_mountain Posted February 14, 2007 Share Posted February 14, 2007 *DELETED* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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