JayB Posted January 14, 2003 Share Posted January 14, 2003 Thought I'd post the conditions we encountered in the Tatoosh Range last weekend just in case anyone is interested. We climbed "Lover's Leap" on Lane Peak, which is the narrow, couloir trending left to right on the far left side of the photo below (photo originally by philfort, linked from www.cascadeclimber.com) You approach the couloir by ascending a moderately angled (25-35 degrees, tops) snow-chute for roughly 400 feet, then enter the couloir by means of a short step that's quite a bit steeper but still pretty mellow (high 50's-low 60's maybe). From here the couloir widens to 30-40 feet or so, and the angle eases back to the mid-40 degree range for about 300 feet. There's another brief steep step at the top of this section, after which point the couloir gets progressively narrower and just a bit steeper. From here you're looking at maybe 300-400 feet to the top of the couloir. Once you arrive at the top there's a tree to your left with a few slings attached that should enable you to rap into "The Zipper" if you've got two 60 meter ropes, or you can traverse into The Zipper by continuing to traverse to your climbers left. It was getting dark and snowing mighty hard at this point so we just rapped from here. Other Info. -Anyone comfortable leading ice to WI3 would probably be comfortable soloing this couloir with one tool under just about any conditions (barring perhaps bullet ice). We had a party of three with a fairly wide range of experience on this trip so we elected to rope up and climbed the route using a running belay. A set-of nuts, 2-3 pickets, and a couple of screws should be adequate for just about any conditions you'd find in the route in. Snowpack: In the couloir: 1 foot to six inches of firm snow atop loose, granlular snow (in places) with ice below. Thin ice on the periphery of the couloir and on the sides of the steep steps mentioned above. Lots of small spin-drift slides off of the rock slabs to the climbers right of the route during our descent. About 1-1.5 meters of snow on the ground. As of Saturday this consisted of 1-2" of hoarfrost atop a dense, icy layer 1.5-2' feet thick, which itself rested atop some fairly unconsolidated, granular snow. On the approach we came across a couple of gullies that broke to the ground. From what we could see it looked like the debris were about a week old, and probably let loose at the beginning of last week's warm spell. When we were hiking out Saturday evening it was raining very heavily at about the midpoint of Lover's Leap and below, and the snow was getting mighty heavy. Might be a bit of a worry if it's resting on nothing more than the granular stuff. Nice day in the mountains.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
savaiusini Posted January 15, 2003 Share Posted January 15, 2003 nice...thanks for the post! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dwayner Posted January 15, 2003 Share Posted January 15, 2003 Great post, JayB....that's one of my favorite climbs. It's generally referred to as "Lover's Lane" rather than Lover's Leap. There are also a couple of steep chutes off of the Zipper, on the right, after you exit into the Zipper from Lover's Lane. I've done them both and they take you up toward the summit ridge. Also, there's another interesting route that goes straight up the north face beginning in that little chute you can see in between the two v-shaped couloirs (zipper on the left, "the fly" on the right.) The crux involves about 5.7 moves over a rotten rock band. Land Peak is cool! Glad you had fun. - Dwayner Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allthumbs Posted January 15, 2003 Share Posted January 15, 2003 Hey Dwayner, ya drunk. How they hangin'? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JayB Posted January 15, 2003 Author Share Posted January 15, 2003 "There are also a couple of steep chutes off of the Zipper, on the right, after you exit into the Zipper from Lover's Lane. I've done them both and they take you up toward the summit ridge. Also, there's another interesting route that goes straight up the north face beginning in that little chute you can see in between the two v-shaped couloirs (zipper on the left, "the fly" on the right.) The crux involves about 5.7 moves over a rotten rock band." Thanks for the info Dwayner - I plan to head back to Lane Peak this season and it's nice to know about some of the other options up there. As far as the two chutes that branch off of El Zipper are concerned, does the lower of the two chutes begin directly across from the top of Lover's Lane or higher up? I saw one or two very narrow slots directly across from where we topped out but they looked mighty heinous when we were out there. If I was looking at the right slots (or one of them) it looks like someone like myself would need a healthy coating of ice in those suckers before venturing forth. Also, how does the slot between The Zipper and The Fly compare to Lover's Lane in terms of pitch, technical difficulty, etc? Thanks again/in advance for any additional info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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