This year's view of Dragontail(l) and Colchuck, across Colchuck Lake.
Colchuck Peak, North Buttress Couloir
Aaron B, Josh A. Thursday, May 13, 2003
Aaron and I arranged to hit the trail at 2:00 AM. The idea was that we were going to do the NBC and then traverse Dragontail, and the early start would give us plenty of time and good (non-slushy) snow conditions.
So I got Peter to bed, packed the car, and headed out of town around 10:00. I had to get gas, and wasn’t at all sure that I would be able to get gas anywhere at midnight, so instead of staying home and sleeping a bit, I headed out with the idea of sleeping at the trailhead, like when we did Forbidden.
I got to the trailhead about 1:00 AM, and laid out my bivvy at the opposite side of the parking lot from the three cars that were already there. I think I managed to sleep a little, not much but maybe half an hour or so.
I finally managed to get myself out of bed about 2:30. Each time I resolved to get up, I'd get one arm out into the cold, and retreat, and fantasize again about "not waking up" and lying there until dawn. Got dressed and went over and woke Aaron up; I wasn’t sure it was his car (he was sleeping in the front seat) until I saw the flowered seat covers (okay, it's his girlfriend's car). He was pretty slow to get up as well, but he got started. He told me that the guy in the white pickup next to us was a climber from Bozeman, Montana, named Josh, and Aaron had invited him along, if that was okay with me. Sure, no problem.
I'd brought along an empty coffee caraffe and milk, planning on getting a "big gulp" of coffee in Leavenworth or somewhere along the way, but no place is open there, so I had to go caffeine free. The promise of the coffee might have gotten me out of bed earlier.
While I was getting ready to go, I heard an odd sound off in the woods. Some sort of animal, I assume, but it sounded exactly like someone banging two metal pipes together. Clank, clank, clank. It wasn’t at all near the trail, so I guess it must have been an animal. Still...
So, after I was ready, I left my pack by Aaron’s car and drove my car back to the “trail park permits required beyond this point” sign. I had some time to look up at the sky, the extraordinary clarity of a clear night at 3600' with no light pollution, the Milky Way stretched across the sky.
We left the trailhead around 3:15 with headlamps, and got to the lake without incident around 5:30 or so. It was a pretty nice view; the lake was still mostly frozen, but obviously too thin to walk on. There were several ski tracks still visible.
After a break for some photos and snacks, we followed the tracks around the lake and up to the basin below Colchuck Glacier, where a two-engine plane swooped so low over the summit of Dragontail that we wondered if it was some sort of search and rescue operation.
It was a bit more difficult to locate the correct couloir than I’d anticipated, particularly since we didn’t have the documentation with us. We passed a couple of false couloirs, and eventually Josh, who’s quite a bit faster than either of us and was well above us, located it, and we headed up.
The snow was quite hard, but not quite steep enough to make for easy front—pointing. The balls of my feet were having a tough time. This is the first time I’d used the anti-balling plates that I got with my crampons, and it turns out that the snaps which hold them together in front dig into the ball of my foot, and hurts terribly. So I had to take them off.
It was still kind of slow going, heading up the couloir. Not so much because I was tired, but because my feet hurt so damned much. I guess those new foot beds didn’t help as much as I’d expected. I was grateful every time one of Josh’s footprints was deep enough that I could rest on the arch of my feet rather than just the ball.
Josh was well above me, and Aaron below. Josh stopped at a Y in the route to wait for us and decide where to go, and so we stopped and had a snack. It was a great view and Josh, who’s never been up here before, was quite impressed with the rock on Dragontail.
The couloir split, with a small branch off to the left, and what looked like the main line straight ahead. We elected to take the main line, and it went just fine. Probably the branch line would have worked fine too, but there would have been a bit of rock scrambling at the top.
On the back side of the mountain, the slope is about the same as the couloir (40-45 degrees) , but the snow was a bit easier. I led most of the way to the summit, and at one point, by accident, I started excavating the footprints of a previous party. They were full of drifted snow, but quite conveniently placed. It seemed odd that they were so close to where we were climbing that I found them by punching my hand blindly into the snow.
We got to the summit around 10:45, the snow climb terminated by a fun bit of scrambling and sqeezing through the rocks, and messed around there for a while. The summit log still doesn’t have a proper book in there, or a pencil, and I didn’t have one either.
I have been taking my little kite along on climbs, and this is the first time I’ve tried to fly it. It didn’t work all that well; oddly enough, it was almost dead still on the summit, and it took a lot of effort to get it up. But Aaron got one perfect shot of me flying it.
On the descent, we did the glissades, and scoped out the NE Couloir; it looks in good shape as well. Aaron thought triple couloirs was in, but if it is, it’s pretty sketchy.
Way back when I climbed Stuart, I saw what I assumed was Colchuck Balanced Rock, since it looked exactly like the illustration in the first Nelson book, and how many rock faces could have a rock balanced above them? So when I saw Stuart last time I was up here, I remarked on seeing Colchuck Balanced Rock and how neat that was. Except that I was wrong; Colchuck Balanced Rock in above Colchuck Lake, east of Dragontail, and the balanced rock next to Mt. Stuart is Sherpa Balanced Rock. Live and learn.
The hike out was long and tiring. I remarked at the lake that despite having had no sleep the night before, I was just fine. I didn’t feel like that by the time we got to the cars.
We got off the trail at one point, and had to thrash around the woods and snow until we located it again, and from there, we had no problems. There were some annoying hail flurries down below the lake.
The trek out through the woods was in the same order as the climb: Josh off ahead, then me, then Aaron. I caught up with Josh at the quiet stream there, and then Aaaron, and when we took off, Josh and Aaron left me in their dust. I just don’t descend fast.
We got to the trailhead about 2:15, eleven hours. Longer than I’d expected. At the trailhead, we changed out of our climbing clothes, and convinced Josh to come into town for a beer, at Uncle Ulie’s.
On the drive home, I was so tired that I had to pull over to the side of the road twice, to nap. The first time was about ten minutes outside Leavenworth, the second time was around Gold Bar (I think.) Both times I actually did fall asleep there on the side of the road. I was a tired puppy, but blasting the air conditioner the rest of the way home kept me awake.