[TR] East Wilman Spire - Beckey 9/14/2013

[trees4me]

Trip: East Wilman Spire - Beckey

 

Date: 9/14/2013

 

Trip Report:

T-man and Mike R let me tag along on a fun climb from t-man's list. This one wasn't really on my radar, but ended up being a really fulfilling fun day in the alpine. Beautiful trail in to glacier meadows, followed by some easy fun boulder hopping up to the gully base. The gully had a thin snow arete for 100-200' in the middle, but was otherwise snow free. T-man headed up he gully climbers right of the snow, while I thought I had a fun class 3/4 ramp system scoped out climbers right. Sucked Mike into my route, he had a 50-50 shot at it and blew it! Ended on a 30' blank slab that t-man through the rope up to us on...

 

enough screwing around in the gully let's get climbing! Standard-ish route was done with a 60m double in three shortish pitches. I took the 2nd pitch as a traverse left mostly class 3/4, and Mike R took the money pitch (3) to the summit. It was pretty airy and I was happy to be dangling around below on that one. I think some people do this in 2 30m pitches by heading straight up the rap route from the end of p1, but that was awful looking rock compared to the solid rock we had climbers left.

 

Three raps got us off the summit, i slipped on the 2nd and had a huge free hanging coo-coo clock move. Grabbed the gear and then to speed time over downclimbing we rapped 4 times down the gully (2 off rusty pitons, 1 new nut and 1 rap sling).

 

mt bikes kinda suck if they're locked to a rack with no key... otherwise mtb are faster than walking

 

 

 

Gear Notes:

Slings for rapping and maybe a piton or two might be a good idea.

Always bring bolt cutters for your partners bike locks

 

Approach Notes:

32x25 is ok for going in, but kinda slow for the flats and going out