[TR] Burgundy Spire - North Face 6/15/2008

[counterfeitfake]

Trip: Burgundy Spire - North Face

 

Date: 6/15/2008

 

Trip Report:

Myself, fenderfour, madeinmontana, and Jeff went to Burgundy Spire last weekend. Despite the fact that the climb is mostly loose blocks perched on top of kitty litter, we had a really good time. The weather was perfect.

 

The approach is brutal but short. We hit snow around 6000 feet and camped around 6500. Our plan was to climb Paisano Pinnacle to get up to the NF of Burgundy. We spent a lot of time at our bivy site staring up at the route, and figured we had a good idea where it was.

 

There it is. From here you can't tell Paisano isn't attached to Burgundy.

 

Sadly two of us were wearing sneakers, nobody had crampons and we had brought only one ice axe. If we'd been smart we would have actually kicked steps up to the base of Paisano, this would have fixed our footwear issues as well as our routefinding issues. But we weren't smart.

 

In the morning the snow was very solid. We found a boot pack going up to Burgundy Col and followed it, planning to traverse right to Paisano at some point. When we started to do this, it was pretty sketchy. Crampons and an axe would have made it a cake walk.

 

We got to a notch and only then understood where we needed to be. We had screwed up. After some conversation we decided to go with the sure thing, and rapped back to the boot pack and headed up to do Burgundy.

 

The look of "we're screwed".

 

We did the climb in about 6 pitches. The first was mostly 4th class, up to the wide gravelly benches below the "amphitheatre". We did another pitch from here to halfway up the amphitheatre, then a third up through the notch in the wall at the top. From here a long traverse rightward under a leaning block brought us within site of the 3 offwidth options to the summit.

 

We didn't really understand where the route went from here, there were a lot of good-looking lines above us, but no obvious way to get onto them. Pulling a few slab moves on lichen would have gained us the sweet little dihedral, but with no pro it would have taken a bigger man than I. I ended up going right around a little corner and climbing a cool dihedral, probably the most fun pitch of the route for me. From there Nate led sideways across an easy traverse (with psychological pro placed behind wimpy flakes) and then up into the 5.8 offwidth. It was his first OW lead and pretty spicy for that; he led it with aplomb.

 

offwidths r hard

 

After a bit Robert and Jeff joined us on the summit. We lounged for a little bit enjoying the view, but as the climb had taken us longer than anyone had planned, we headed down before long. It took us 6 double-length rappelsl, which went pretty smoothly, except for one stuck rope I had to lead up to retrieve.

 

Summit shot!

 

It was almost as bad as it looks.

 

Once at the col we gathered our stuff and changed into our boots quickly, and headed down through the snow which now was, of course, very soft. Hitting the bivy site we packed in a hurry and continued down the steep steep dusty trail. Everything went smoothly and although the last steep climb back up to the car is a real punisher, we were all glad to have gotten back before dark.

 

After a long day the drive back from Washington Pass takes forever. Dinner at Burger King was the best we could do, at least it was calories.

 

Good weekend.

 

Gear Notes:

Rope and light alpine rack. If you're comfortable with a short OW you only need up to a #3 C4, otherwise... ? I'm sure if you wanted you could place a #4, #5, and #6.

 

Crampons and axes would have been really nice in the AM.

 

Approach Notes:

Very steep but short. We hit snow around 6000 feet.

[Off_White]

Great TR, love the pictures. Looks like awesome conditions for April.

[Blake]

To clarify the routefinding confusion, Burgundy and Paisano beta overload can be found here:

 

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=482449

[counterfeitfake]

Those pictures were very helpful to us Blake. The only gap in our comprehension was between the leaning block and the offwidth- do you remember what you did?

[fgw]

Nice TR.

 

Pulling a few slab moves on lichen would have gained us the sweet little dihedral.

 

That slab to dihedral with a wide crack was fun (& easier than it looked) but ended up being pointless as it did not buy much progress toward the summit. Curious too where the route actually went.

[Alex]

This should help.

 

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=2&Number=494005&Searchpage=1&Main=36351&Words=Burgundy+Alex&topic=0&Search=true#Post494005