[TR] Leavenworth Ice Climbing - (pics + helmet cam) - Millennium Wall 1/28/2012

[CamelJockey]

Trip: Leavenworth Ice Climbing - (pics + helmet cam) - Millennium Wall

 

Date: 1/28/2012

 

Trip Report:

Brian and I got out Saturday and ventured onto Millennium Wall. It was a great day out. It wasn’t as fat as when I was out there a couple times last year, and the ice was not the best. It was pretty soft on the outside layer, causing crampons to sheer off unless you kicked in solidly. Tool sticks seems to either rain down ice, or go in too far, resulting in added effort to release the tool. The upper part was hollow and airy (I had drilled in a 22 at one point and didn’t hit any good ice until the end). The very top where it mellows out before the tree was all snow. Still, it was quite nice. Not perfect ice, but hey, we live in WA, so we can't expect that, right? All in all, lots of fun and well worth the outing. The ice was super fun to top rope, but my initial lead was time consuming since I was paying lots of attention to what I was doing. Once we got the rope set, we basically did multiple laps up it with slight variations.

 

Not sure how it will be now that the rain + warmth came in.

 

FYI - Careno and Rainbow were probably climbable as seen from the road, but they were by no means fat. They are probably flowing waterfalls now.

 

The line we climbed on the right

 

The left lines

 

 

Here is a helmet cam video. It's not meant to be motivational - it's meant to show you the conditions.

 

 

Gear Notes:

9 screws

pair of double ropes (although the pitch is 30 meters so 1 rope would suffice)

 

Approach Notes:

Snowshoes halfway up the trail

[cdmike112]

Nice I was messing around Sunday up the icicle and watched a slide come down over hubba hubba.

[CamelJockey]

I believe it. It was raining on us a bit while we climbed on Sat. By the time we got in the car and were heading towards Stevens Pass, it was a torrential downpour. I imagine the snow stability on Sunday was terrible.

[JasonDowns]

Nice work, Samona!

[CamelJockey]

Jason Downs, I <3 you like a fat kid <3s cake.

 

[Val Zephyr]

 

Thanks for the post! I was wondering how your trip went up at Millennium (we spoke with you guys briefly at the Snow Creek parking lot). We did climb Rainbow right (well, I guess Rainbow right usually goes on the right side of the waterfall and we climbed just to the left). It was fun, but it was thin. I picked the best spots I could for pro and still bottomed out a couple of my 10cm screws. Got enough good pieces and the climbing was easy, so it was OK.

 

Here's a quick pic of our route:

 

I was thinking about heading out to Leavenworth again this weekend. It sounds like the warm weather might be hitting the routes hard though. I don't have a great feel for how quickly things form or disappear yet. Those of you that frequent Leavenworth ice, Is it even worth it this weekend?