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[TR] Misc. from the Enchantments / Stuart - 5/3/2016


NickM

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Trip: Misc. from the Enchantments / Stuart -

 

Date: 5/3/2016

 

Trip Report:

Just started a spring of unemployment and mountains, and had quite a little 4-day trip in the Enchantments. I went around a bit with the skis and sharp things, had some fun, got some beat-down, did some things right, did some things wrong, and generally got the know the place. A cool place! And now I'm tired. Here's a random smattering of info:

 

- Road: closed but dry. FS trucks doing work on it when I left Tuesday morning, so it may open soon?

- Travel to Colchuck lake: Booted from the car. Mostly snow after the trailhead, but big dirt stretches and crap to skin.

- Lake: crossable last week, seemed too melted around the edges to be reliable by Monday. Went into a knee trying though...

- Colchuck NBC/west face: would have be a good ski if the two aspects weren't opposite...some corn, some hard hard

- Triple Couloirs, Dragontail: Good climbing hard snow in 1st couloir, crap for skiing. Not much of an ice climber yet, so went up the first ice step for a bit until I was done and went down. Seemed like nice ice for how warm it's been; enough for a deep v-thread at one point at least. A party did it the next morning and moved through the whole route at a nice pace.

- Colchuck glacier and Asgard skied super duper nice with the sun. Pre-dinner corn o'clock on Asgard at 7pm was pretty cool.

- Snowline on south aspect down towards Ingalls is getting high. Weak sauce. Went up Asgard and down the back, down and west, and back up over the Argonaut - Sherpa col. Turned into a dirt-boulder-manzanita expedition with a heavy pack that took 5x longer than planned.

- General better snow cover over by Stuart

- Ice Cliff glacier looked...I don't know what to compare it too. Getting up the initial ice looked good, but the unknowns regarding the glacier, shrund, and cornice way up there kept me from doing it alone. Downclimbing the bottom of TC was fun and what not, but I wasn't in the mood to bail again.

- Sherpa is a sick ski. Nice and filled in with smooth snow aside from various debris. I really liked how the sun hits different parts of it at different times, so as long as you time off the summit and the upper Sherpa chute well, you've got good snow somewhere on the lower part.

 

Hopefully the photos help more than words. Happy May!

Stuart

P1000460.jpg

 

ICG

P10004621.jpg

 

TC

P1000428.jpg

 

Top of Dragontail looking west

P1000439.jpg

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Based on the conditions you saw, do you think it's insane to do an Enchantments thru-hike this weekend with a group that has (a) very little backpacking experience, and (b) no snow floatation equipment? I know Aasgard Pass would very challenging and probably a no-go for such a group; but that aside, are we going to be postholing the entire way?

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Based on the conditions you saw, do you think it's insane to do an Enchantments thru-hike this weekend with a group that has (a) very little backpacking experience, and (b) no snow floatation equipment? I know Aasgard Pass would very challenging and probably a no-go for such a group; but that aside, are we going to be postholing the entire way?

 

YES! Bad idea!

 

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