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[TR] Mix-up Peak - The Misunderstanding 3/7/2015


laurel

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Trip: Mix-up Peak - The Misunderstanding

 

Date: 3/7/2015

 

Trip Report:

Original FA trip report from kurthicks: http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1039670

 

If you're looking for a moderate alpine ice route and you don't want to go party on Colfax with everyone else...

 

Sam, Alex, and I took advantage of unprecedentedly favorable alpine ice conditions for alpine ice at Cascade Pass. Sam bagged her first alpine ice climb, nice work!

 

Someone had obviously recently been thinking the same thing, since there was a nice boot track already in (thanks!). Conditions are much fatter than on the FA, it's now about 3 or 4 short pitches of fun alpine snice and the rest snow walking. No mandatory mixed climbing unless you count kicking rocks while walking on the summit ridge. Here's some conditions-type photos:

 

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First "ice pitch"

 

The 'roof draped with icicles' is conveniently almost fully draped with thick if somewhat styrofoamy white ice.

 

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5th pitch

 

The fifth is still a bit steep for a short bit so I'm not going to particularly tell anyone it's not AI4, but definitely seems easier than it looks in the picture in the FA report.

 

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Mixup summit ridge

 

More pictures: https://www.flickr.com/photos/laurelfan/sets/72157650858322510/with/16770708631/

 

 

Gear Notes:

Anchors take a bit of contriving. We took full advantage of having 3 people to carry gear and brought a dozen screws, single set of cams to #2, nuts, tricams, and a handful of pins, and used a bit of everything (especially pins for anchors). We definitely did not need that many screws seeing as how one of our party forgot that half of them were in her pack and just carried them up the whole route, and we still only placed about half of what we had out. The screws on the steeper pitch were not really confidence inspiring so I protected it mostly with rock gear.

 

Approach Notes:

Currently, the Cascade River Road is snow free and open to the 21mi gate, approach (winter route) is on crust and old avy debris from the parking lot to Cascade Pass. No flotation necessary. People are taking the summer trail but winter route is fast walking (cramponing maybe) conditions.

 

We had to make one 60m rap from a tree on the East Face descent, probably because it was dark and we went the wrong way.

 

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Nice Job. Looks like you beat me to the punch on the TR. I climbed it Friday the 6th and thought it was a great route! I would say the crux pitch it solid AI4 as it seemed quite vertical, especially with the marginal gear. I was able to find good rock anchors before and after ech technical pitch though which kept the whole affair pretty sane. Beatutiful route in a great location

I'm gonna hijack your post now and add a few pics from my trip.

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Sunrise at Cascade Pass

 

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Looking up the frist technical ice pitch, heads up and right.

 

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Third technical pitch that heads up to the ridge

 

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Traversing the ridge.

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