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[TR] Lillooet, BC - Rambles Center 2/14/2009


Layback

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Trip: Lillooet, BC - Rambles Right

 

Date: 2/14/2009

 

Trip Report:

Priscilla, Paul Helen and I spent the weekend up in Lillooet. It's been nearly 5 years since I've been on waterfall ice. The last time was when I was still living in New England, where I had the opportunity to get out nearly every weekend in winter. This was a great treat for me.

 

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Saturday afternoon, we headed over to Rambles. We took a quick look at Rambles and Rambles Center and decided that we didn't like it - the ice on Rambles wasn't fat enough to take full screws and Rambles Center had missing sections. So we headed over to Rambles Right just a few hundred yards away. When we got there we saw Richard C. and his wife (Susan?) from Everett finishing off the first pitch. Above them was Scott W and his partner, both from EMRU.

 

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I led the first pitch (WI 4) and set up a top rope for the others:

 

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Helen Got Her First Experince on Water Ice:

 

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After that, Paul took a spin, but unfortunately ended up aggravating a partially torn bicep:

 

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With Paul hurting, Priscilla took a run and broke down the TR. On Sunday we looked around for other things to do but everything WI 4 and under seemed either occupied or not fat enough for my tastes. With that in mind, I opted to head home at noon to get a jump on the 5 hour solo ride home. Priscilla and the others spent the rest of the day scouting out routes for next time. Her notes are at the bottom of this TR...

 

If anyone is considering going up there, there are a number of WI 5 routes (way out of my leading ability) in great condition including Carl's Berg:

 

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Priscilla's Notes:

 

Loose Lady is in, and the first step (considered an approach) was nice and plastic, but wet. It makes a good place to practice, a frozen creek slab about 20 ft. high, something like WI2. Good place to start, and then move up higher for swinging leads up to WI3-4.

 

The Rambles is partially in. Rambles central is discontinuous and mixed; Rambles left looks good, and Rambles right is good. The bash up there through the woods pretty much establishes that if you use it, it will be for a whole day. What we found there was WI3+ to 4.

 

Isodorth is in, but the river crossing is not frozen, and the approach in the book was disparaged by local climbers as a trip in itself. We didn't go there.

 

Carlsberg is way too much for people who aren't somewhere in the WI 5 level, but it is nice n fat. We didn't see anyone using it.

 

Icy BC is in, but not as fat as I have seen it before, and therefore steeper on the first pitch. It looks to be WI4. Upper pitches are even more. There are a series curtains and seeps to the left that are in, although the curtains don't all connect. They are about WI4. To the left of that, I was told there is a walk up/down, in the range of WI3. We used the lower right of ICY BC for a practice area and made a nice afternoon of it.

 

We checked in with locals and were told Cherry Ice and Honeyman aren't in.

 

We had a good time of it though, and Joe led a pitch on The Rambles Right, which I cleaned. That section was really plating off and climbers above kicked down alot of bombs.

 

FOOD: The Lillooet Lodge is absolutely a delightful surprise. Japanese cuisine, including sushi, and very good. The Greek place has taken on airs and is charging tablecloth prices; it's still good. Goldpanner was closed. Mile-O is now owned by a Korean man and it's showing its years, but is still just fine for dirtbag clilmbers!

Edited by Layback75
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Hi, just a few additional comments to Dru's, and please don't take them personally.

 

As Dru/G-Spotter noted, you're on Rambles Center, which clocks in at pretty vanilla WI3. I and partner climbed both PS-Dihedral (Rambles Right) and all of Rambles Center last weekend and it was all in, and basically WI3. Rambles Center top pitch currently has a nice variation up a chimney and pulling through a roof.

 

I and my partner climbed Isadorth on last Monday. It was nice and rambly, but never more than WI2+ though much longer in its current incarnation than 150m advertised in the guide. You can cross the Cayoosh easily anywhere directly below the route on abundant ice dams. We solo'ed the whole thing. Probably 300m of climbing, then walk off climbers left. Not too bad except the 10 min of slide alder bashing. Belmore is also in, but lower angle and would be hard to justify taking a rope.

 

Cherry Ice and Honeyman *are* in, we climbed Honeyman last week as well (Saturday). Honeyman has a gusher on it's left side, but otherwise offered 3 full pitches of quite highly entertaining ice to WI3+ (the first pitch).

 

westcoastice.com typically has all the latest conditions, but should anyone else be heading up in the next weekend, here are some additional tidbits:

 

Phair Creek: hill was a sheet of glass, no way no how. We almost destroyed the Impreza trying to go just 400 feet up it, then sliding backwards downhill uncontrolled at like 20mph!!

 

Bridge Creek: Jade in, Capricorn in, NightnGale in, everything else out. Shriek has a huge roof on it's last pitch where an outer curtain fell off, looks solid 6.

 

Birkenhead: The Plum, Valentine in. Lots of ice up that valley right now, some very close to the road. Didn't have the new guide that day to put any names on anything but the obvious.

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Hey - Thanks for the heads up guys. I certainly don't take it personally. That was my first time there - you guys definitely know the area better than me. Dang, after a 5 year hiatus from WI, I guess I am a bit rusty. That felt WI 4 to me. I need to get at it more...

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Hi Layback, Good to see you up there last weekend. Thanks for the picture of Leigh. As mentioned by Alex, here is a photo of the top tier of Rambles Center, which we were climbing when you took those photos down below.

 

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We spent all day Sunday and Monday at Oregon Jack - it was spectacular.

 

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Edited by waterboy
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I didn't walk into Jade, but it's as "in" as Honeymans is. All relative I guess. Capricorn final pitches were definitely there. If anything its been plenty cold (perhaps too cold) and was overcast every day for most of the day, but there is absolutely no new water feeding the routes so the ice is getting old.

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Capricorn final pitches were definitely there. If anything its been plenty cold (perhaps too cold) and was overcast every day for most of the day, but there is absolutely no new water feeding the routes so the ice is getting old.

 

A couple weeks ago I also saw the large flow of Capricorn from the road and made a mental note to come back and climb it sometime. So this last Saturday I went back with a buddy to go climb it and started up the approach in the early light. The approach looked pretty straight forward from the road, and we made our way through some fresh snow up the treed area to the left of Plan b, occasionally seeing some blue flagging. We then headed further left (and passed a little ways underneath Like a Rocket) and entered a distinct gully that (aside from forcing us to wade through waist deep powder) contained a couple short WI2/2+ steps. Thinking we were almost at the climb, we were suddenly faced with an impassible 30-odd foot rock wall at the top of the gully. The guidebook mentioned overcoming a short WI3 step, but this had no ice on it. we tried going around it, but with more rock on the right and very steep forest on the left we evenutally gave up, unsure if we'd gone up the wrong gully, or if the WI3 step that the guidebook mentions had simply not formed up or if the afternoon sun would send all the fresh snow down on us in some massive avalanche. Any one else done the Capricorn approach? Any of this sound familiar? Would like to head back up there sometime so any advice is appreciated.

 

Ended up hiking out and going into the Hell Creek area. Was good fun.

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Good effort,

 

How did the rest of the bridge look? Night N Gale is fat? Any other Lillooet observations?

 

I had a great day poking around Suicide bluffs, quite a bit of fun with plenty of ice for a day of good times and short approaches, Graham posted up at WCI.

 

Tyrolean is all good, but a tad tiring

 

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Cheers

J

 

 

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Thanks... Certainly got a work out slogging up the hillside. On the plus side it was a great day to be out and we still managed to get a nice afternoon of climbing in at Hell Creek. We didn't go all the way down to Nite n gale, but we did notice that Old Dogs, New picks was non-existent, and Jade falls looked OK, but perhaps a bit smaller than when we did it a couple years ago. Drove by IcyBC on our way to Oregon Jack on Sunday and all three tiers looked sweet. It's certainly been cold up there (it was -11 in town when we woke up saturday) and i would presume a lot of climbs are in right now. Hopefully it'll stay that way for a bit longer.

 

Heading up what we thought was the Capricorn drainage. Rock wall looming above...

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Hell Creek Falls area:

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Nice photos of Suicide Bluffs! Think I'll have to go check out that tyrolean sometime...

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