[TR] Snoqualmie Mountain - New York Gully 1/9/2016

[ilias]

Trip: Snoqualmie Mountain - New York Gully

 

Date: 1/9/2016

 

Trip Report:

On Saturday, 4 of us headed out to try New York Gully. For me, it was really my first attempt at an alpine route that involved a combination of ice, mixed, and potentially aid climbing. Some of our group was slightly more experienced with mixed alpine but it was fairly new for all of us.

 

We didn't get a great sense of conditions in advance as there were no recent reports. On the approach, we did find tracks in the snow that stopped and turned around from right around when you could get a view of the route, so at least one party probably looked at the conditions and thought better of it. But with relatively little experience in judging mixed conditions by sight from the base of the route, we decided to give it a go.

 

The views from the approach were beautiful:

 

 

Snow going up the couloir towards the route was fairly deep but felt stable:

 

 

I'll give a brief pitch by pitch even though there is beta already out there.

 

Pitch 1 (50-60m, Snow): As you ascend the big snowy couloir, the route is on the wall to your left. It starts where there is an obvious break in the rocks with a lower angle ramp traversing up and left up the face. This pitch was in snow covered condition, it was very easy going getting deep steps in the snow that felt very secure. We placed one picket for pro along the pitch. At the end of P1, you come to an oven sized rock sticking out of the snow where there is a very tempting easy looking ramp heading to the right, and slightly steeper terrain heading left. The rock takes a 0.75 and a #1 cam, and other gear to build a nice anchor to belay your follower up P1. We had to wipe a lot of snow off the rock to find these placements.

 

Pitch 2 (50-60m, M3?): From the rock, don't be drawn up the easy ramp to the right. You have to keep traversing up and left (this took us a few minutes to figure out). This pitch was more difficult than the first but still pretty fun and easy. The snow coverage was thin in places with rock underneath. I placed 5 pieces of pro along this pitch: 2 pitons and 3 cams. The pitch ends at a large tree anchor with red slings around it. It had a few short mixed slots that you had to climb up such as this one right at the end.

 

 

 

 

Pitch 3 (60m, M4): The "Box Gully":

 

This pitch was in what I thought was fairly bad condition, though I'm no expert. There wasn't much ice... I don't think ice was deeper than 1-2 inches anywhere. A lot of shallow snow over rock. You could get tool sticks in frozen moss/dirt here and there. It's fairly low angle overall but had a couple vertical/bulgy steps that were made difficult by snow that kept blowing out if you tried to stand on it. Much of the climbing involved drytool placements with your tools. It did seem to have plenty of places for rock pro, though. I followed this pitch and felt a bit sketched out by the weird drytool-type climbing with feet that kept blowing out.

 

We built a gear anchor after about 60m of climbing up the box gully. Looking back down the pitch:

 

 

Pitch 4 (30m? M4): The rest of the box gully. This section was generally easier than P3 with just one step that I found quite difficult which involved surmounting a bulge where I couldn't get any feet by doing a pullup on drytool placements. More of the same conditions as P3, only a thin veneer of ice, rock features obscured by snow, but not enough snow to be able to stand on it where you really needed to. The pitch ends at a large snowy ledge with a big boulder, below the obvious 5.8 crack that's in all the beta out there. Photo of our belay at the top of P3 showing the start of P4 above:

 

 

 

Pitch 5: The 5.8/Aid Pitch

 

Due to us being newer to this style of climbing and what we found to be challenging conditions making us go quite slowly, we came to the base of this pitch as it was getting dark. We started to try to lead it, but with it getting dark and us having found the last two pitches quite difficult and this one looking even more intimidating, we made the call that it would be a better decision to retreat back down the route rather than trying to push the crux in the dark.

 

Bailing:

 

We bailed down the route in 4 double rope rappels. The first two rappels (down the box gully) were quite straightforward. We did leave one cam in the middle of the box gully, a #1.

 

From the tree at the top of P2, we decided to rappel back down the traversing pitch rather than head straight down into the unknown. Traversing that far on rappel was a bit awkward. We built another rap anchor at the rock on the top of P1 (a 0.75 cam and a nut) and did another traversing rappel back down to the base. It was probably around 9:00pm or so at this point.

 

Overall we stayed safe and had a fun day and a great learning experience, though there were definitely some things we could have done better:

- start earlier to give ourselves more time

- keep a better track of the timeline and evaluate whether it's reasonable to continue onward or not before it actually gets dark, taking into account the difficulty of the remaining climbing

- learn to better evaluate the conditions of a mixed route visually before starting up it

 

Gear Notes:

Each climbing pair had roughly:

 

- 0.3-#3 BD cams: Used these a lot

- A set of nuts: Used these a bit

- 1-2 pickets: Useful

- 5 pitons (knifeblades): Useful, probably could have gotten away with 3

- 4-5 ice screws: Never used, tried to place a stubby once but it only went in half way before bottoming out

 

We left behind some gear to bail (0.75 and #1 Camalot C4s, 2 nuts, some slings, and some biners). If someone climbs the route and feels like returning any of the gear that would be awesome, please contact me here. Or if you feel like bootying it that's fine too, a bit of a prize for climbing a serious alpine route like this

 

Approach Notes:

Lots of deep snow on the way up to the saddle. Some kind of flotation is useful.

Edited January 12, 2016 by ilias

[Alisse]

Great trip report, Ilia, as usual! Sounds like a beautiful adventure Glad you guys learned some things and only had to sacrifice a few pieces of pro!

[obwan]

Great trip report and nice photos! You have progressed from novice to expert in one climb - this could possibly qualify for an Epic ( although a full on epic usually has an unplanned overnite). Anyways, instead of baptism by fire - this is baptism by waterfall. You need to get a climbing suit like this one, I have for sale.

http.//cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=109724&title=goretex-

 

[Alex789]

Hi guys,

We have some of your gear: 1 cam (#1 I think), 4 small biners and a sling. We dismantled one of your rap stations, but left others intact.

I have 2 small biners and my friend got the rest. He lives in Oregon and will come to Seatle area in 1 - 2 weeks. He will bring what he took back then. I work in Bellevue. Email me at alexander@gorobets.com to arrange returning gear to you.

[ilias]

That's awesome! Thanks! I'll email you.

[OlegV]

Thanks to Ilia and Co. for breaking a trail for us. I still took us 3 hours to swim to the base of the route!