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[TR] Snow Lake - Oompa Loompa (WI3) 2/1/2009


tvashtarkatena

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Trip: Snow Lake - Oompa Loompa (WI3)

 

Date: 2/1/2009

 

Trip Report:

Oompa Loompas promise candy but they're really not very sweet.

 

Don and I skipped over to Snow Lake to check out some ice he'd seen from across the lake about 50 years ago. We passed what he thought might have been the flows, but they looked cottage cheesy and the top outs involved tunneling back through the mountain to the other side.

 

Then, it caught my eye. A perfect, blue line pointing toward heaven far above the West end of the lake on a minor buttress coming off of lower Chair Peak.

 

I drew me like a cracked skull lures a zombie.

 

The ice appeared to be good, but, in fact, it was heavily sublimated, occasionally weeping, and frosted with partially consolidated spindrift deposits. Nothing fantastically sketchy, but not great, either.

 

I belayed off of a couple of twigs and an ice tool because the tree I thought I could get to 30 feet below turned out to require some form of levitation or sudden transformation into a guy who can actually climb worth a damn. The next half pitch involved some swimming through a top layer of vertical snow encrusted on some small, hanging trees after climbing a gulley with a narrow smear of warming snow.

 

Nothing wrong with the line itself, mind you.

 

e found the following descent route after some searching:

 

After topping out on top of the buttress, continue to the next mini buttress and descent steep snow to the very last small tree (getting this right is important) on the West side near the end, above an icy gulley. One 60 m rope barely gets you all the way down.

 

Oompa Loompa, or whatever it's called:

 

80m, WI3

 

 

 

Gear Notes:

Screws. 2 small cams and a lost arrow would have come in real handy.

 

Approach Notes:

Snow Lake

Edited by tvashtarkatena
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