[TR] Lane Peak - Lover's Lane 4/25/2010

[pac man]

Trip: Lane Peak - Lover's Lane

 

Date: 4/25/2010

 

Trip Report:

My climbing partner's trip report can be found HERE.

 

Saturday's weather prediction looked wet so we postponed our trip for a beautiful Sunday. We started a little late, and walked up to the freshly plowed road towards Reflection Lake. We made our way to the bend, where we cut off and headed towards Lane Peak. The crux of Lane Peak in the next few weeks might very well be the creek crossing. We found some stable snow bridges, but I'm not sure how long they will last.

 

 

We headed up Lover's Lane, initially sinking to mid-calf and occasionally to mid-thigh. We stayed in the trees where we could to remain on the only firm snow. After getting higher up, the snow conditions firmed up and about a third of the way up Lover's Lane we decided to rope up and simul-climb. My climbing partner was psyched about leading the climb, so she took the sharp end, protecting with a slung tree, some pickets, and some rock pro ranging from ~0.3" to ~1.25" (maybe 3-4 pieces).

 

 

At one point she decided to make it a little more spicey and traversed onto the rock slabs on climber's right on an "interestingly" dirty looking line. After a little wrestling with a tree to get to a ledge, she decided to veer back to Lover's Lane proper to finish the top of the col.

 

 

I led the last 10 ft from the tree belay to the top of the col and peered over briefly. A previous trip report we read stated that a double rope rap was necessary in 2010 to reach The Zipper, but other trip reports from previous years didn't mention a double rope rap and mentioned a way to traverse into The Zipper. From my vantage point, I decided that I didn't think our 60m and 30m rope would get us to the base, but I could not see the rappel route, and it may have reached.

 

Instead we started up climbers left toward the left subpeak over shallow soft snow for a 30m pitch. My partner headed up another 15m to see if there was a doable route up higher. We decided to bail due to the deteriorating snow conditions up higher and not knowing exactly what it would entail. We finished off Lover's Lane anti-climatically with a couple raps and some downclimbing.

 

In hindsight, we should have taken more time to scope out the rappel or traverse into The Zipper.

 

Gear Notes:

Pickets, tools or one ice axe, 3-4 cams ranging from #2 TCU to 1.25" (we used a link cam but a #1 might work)

 

Approach Notes:

Short and sweet

[Val Zephyr]

Hey, nice job on the route! That climb was one of my favorite days out this season.

 

The rappel was kind of intimidating. So, for future reference on this route, the tip that I got was from a group that went up just a couple weeks before I did. The snow depth was still fairly low at this time. They said that with the low snow, a rappel with a single 60m rope appeared to not quite reach the zipper and the person on rappel decided to climb back up to the rap tree, they found another adventurous decent from the sounds of it. It is a long rappel, but with a little more snow, I bet that a 60m would make it most of the time. Having an extra rap line really gives some piece of mind though.

[LostCamKenny]

nice, steve!