(Climb date: Friday February 11, 2011)
Solo day. Spending tomorrow recon’ing with Siddles, so I wanted to climb ice yesterday, but no other slackers had the day off to join me and I wanted to keep the ice thing going, so a solo day was in order. Back to Evan Thomas Creek (etc), lots of good memories in this valley.
Casual hike to Chantilly Falls, guide book quotes 100 m of WI2, but I would put the final 30 at a solid grade 3 or tougher if bad ice. Picked the steepest line on the final 20 metres, bad ice and a bit spicy for a solo for me; good fun. Rapped off and then headed upstream to the B2, WD40 area.
Good trail to WD40 area, but a few off track trails once above the canyon on the flats. Looks like someone climbed WD40 since the last big snow fall, about 6 days earlier.
Solo’ed B2 twice. First line was just left of centre, bad, technical ice with lots of air (just left of line between white and dirty ice).
Again quite spicy for a solo for me. Quick rap to base, picked up pack and solo’ed back up, easy far right side, then slogged up slope to exit trail.
Back to game trail, back to main creek, then headed up to Exit Combo gully. The first little step of Exit Combo is always cool and fun, just way too short.
Cool crack in rock to right of first step, would love to mix lead it one day, looks like great trad rock gear, maybe M4, M6?
Made the very bad call of slogging up to the upper Exit Combo ice section, tough slog of knee to thigh deep snow. Climbed upper ice, then headed to summer trail.
Holy crap, what a mistake. Since 2008 there has been a ton of logging in this section of etc, looks like fire breaks, or maybe Pine Beetle cutting? but there was a grid pattern of trees removed and no ski or hiking paths packed in. Spent about one hour and about two kilometres busting knee to thigh deep snow back to etc, entered etc near the base of Moonlight, what a pain in the ass.
Despite the snow slog, had fun climbing ice, felt totally solid on all solos.
No comments:
Post a Comment