Lee at the bottom of Blue Lake Basin. Behind him is Cutthroat Peak, and he spent a lot of time staring at that south buttress. We'll be back, I guess.
Southwest Couloir, South Early Winters Spire
with Lee, April 26, 2003
Well, that's not true; we made several stops on the drive, looking at Colonial Peak, Davis Peak, Pyramid and "Paul Bunyon's Stump" and others, and taking photographs. It was a beautiful day as the mist cleared, crystal blue and barely a cloud in the sky.
We needed snowshoes from the first step off the parking area (which was nicely melted out and dry) and were fortunate to be able to follow some snowshoe tracks, fortunate because neither of us would have been able to guess the direction of the trail.
Up, up, up the hillside, out of the trees and into the beautiful snow bowl, called, apparently Blue Lake Basin, there to the west of the spires.
Eventually, as we identified the spire and Lee picked out the couloir, we saw the two guys ahead of us, breaking our trail. We met up with them at the base of the couloir, where they were just finishing up preparing to ascend. We thanked them for breaking trail and talked a bit. It took us just about two hours to make it up there, and took them an hour more.
They took off up the couloir, so we stashed out snowshoes and hung out a bit, to not crowd them (they were roped up and setting pro at every opportunity) and ate some lunch and just enjoyed the view. We could see skiers skinning up the slope in the basin, and I waited in vain to get a photo of them skiing down.
Eventually we took off up the couloir, without crampons. We didn't rope up, not seeing the need: if you don't need crampons, we figured, why would you need a rope?
The climb went pretty quickly. It was an interesting ambiance, up in this deep fairly steep couloir, but with the snow fairly soft.
The couloir ends about 50 feet from the summit, and you go to the left, and scramble up the rocks to the summit. Nelson says this is 5.2, but it didn’t feel that hard to me, even in my plastic boots. I'd have felt more comfortable in my leathers for this bit, but I made it. We were on the summit a bit before noon.
The summit was splendid, not windy at all. I called Heidi and talked with her and Peter, who informed me, gravely, that he doesn't like oatmeal anymore. Apparently there was a crisis at home this morning. Heidi told me that it was overcast and grey at home, so I felt pretty smug. So we hung around for a while, looking at the mountains, admiring the really spectacular cornices, and waiting for the other guys to downclimb.
Me, and Monkey, at the summit. Behind me is Silver Star Peak.
From the summit, a view of Blue Lake Basin. Note the impressive cornice hanging down over the ridge -- the sunlight is shining through it.
Then we roped up and Lee went first. In retrospect, it was kind of a waste of time for him to set pro, because if I’d have fallen down into the couloir, I’d have likely come to a stop well before the pro caught me and as he pointed out, the rock was pretty crumbly, and if I'd had a really disasterous fall (down the east face, for instance) it wasn't clear to him that the pro would have held.
Anyhow, we unroped, and I stashed the rope back into my pack, and we downclimbed, which wasn’t nearly as fun as climbing up; it was fairly slow going. There was one rappel anchor we’d seen on our way up, about ¼ of the way up, and it didn’t seem worthwhile dragging out the rope for that. I'm guessing later in the spring as the snow level drops, more rappel anchors will become exposed.
Back where we’d stashed the snowshoes, we ended up plunge-stepping down the steepest part of the slope, then I stopped to put on my snowshoes, since I’d broken the strap on my left gaiter, and I wanted to keep the snow out of my boot.
There must have been a dozen people out there, including at least three dogs, all skiing. Near the car we passed a couple of people that Lee knew from the WAC, including a dog, who liked chasing snowballs as well as Maisie. By the time we got to the parking lot, though, the dog was stretched out like a corpse on the warm asphalt road. One worn out pup!
One of the guys we ran into, Mike Mahanay, put up a trip report on his website of his weekend -- look here to see what they were up to -- and the source of the photo I stole above.
But I’d forgotten my sunscreen, and though Lee lent me his, I didn’t use enough, and I got good and burned, all down my neck and ears and face. Just as well, people will know what I was up to this weekend. Back at the car we changed (It sure is nice to get into a dry warm pair of jeans, warm as though they'd just got out of the dryer from sitting in the sun-warmed car.) We tried to drive up to the lookout to get the tourist's view of the spires, but it was closed, so we just parked at the gate and gawked up at Liberty Bell, picking out the routes on the north and east faces.
Then, back in the car. It sure is nice to have someone to share the driving with! Got home around 7:00.
At the risk of sounding macho, I had expected a bit more challenging climb, harder snow and some front-pointing. I guess, unlike some other couloirs I've been on, this one doesn't get fed a lot of avalanche snow from above; it doesn't appear that it avalanches much at all, judging from the good-sized trees below it. I expect the route would be more fun in a month or so, when the snow has had a chance to get good and compressed.
Equipment notes: The last few climbs in my old reliable leather boots (Reichle Eigers), the balls of my feet really hurt at the end of the day. Today I wore my plastic boots (a used pair of Koflach SoftLights I got from Second Ascent and had to get stretched to fit my wide feet), and they worked well; my feet didn’t hurt at all. I’m really relieved to see that it’s the boots and not my feet.
Looking at these photos, it appears that red is in this year, among the climbing set.