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Kris Haskins Staff Webpage |
Alpental Ice Fall |
| February 15th 2009 |
Last weekend when I had gone out to climb Guye's South Gully, I had noticed a cool looking line from the parking lot. I think it is on the Alpental descent from Guye, and it is a kind of waterfall area. When I saw it, I figured it wouldn't be any more difficult than WI3 or so, and thought it would make a fun climb.
I asked Evan if he would like to come up and give it a go with me, and he was excited to give it a shot. We decided on a late start from Seattle, and Evan was at my house at 9AM. We grabbed my gear, and we were off for the climb around 9:15AM. We rolled into a pretty deserted lower alpental parking lot, geared up, and set off for the fall area
We started off by following some tracks we found in the snow, then branched off once we got to a more direct line to the ice. Evan made some lovely post hole steps for us on the very short approach. We got to the base of the waterfall, and decided that it looked like it should be really doable for us. Sadly, we only had one set of tools, but the falls had numerous short steps so we figured we would be able to do short pitches, attach the tools to the rope and lower them down to the follower. We put on our harnesses, and I took off on the first easy pitch.
This was my first time leading on ice, and we only had 3 screws so I was pretty stoked that the climing was easy and had many short steps. Step one was my first lead of the day, and it went very smoothly. I don't have enough experience to grade it, but I'd say it was no more than WI2. Evan was actually able to follow it without tools by trusting his feet and using the featured Ice like hand holds. Evan led the next pitch, which was pretty low angle as well and I was also able to follow without tools. At the top of it, there was some low angle snow so we coiled the rope between us and moved to the third pitch.
I'm geared up and ready to lead (Photo by Evan)
Me Leading the first pitch (Photo by Evan)
Evan climbs up Our second pitch
Evan moves up towards the third pitch
Start of the Third pitch
I led out the third pitch, which was another short step of some maybe WI2+ ice and anchored to a tree on the let hand side and brought Evan up. It was a bit harder, so we had our first attempt at throwing the tools down. It actually worked pretty well to take up all the slack, then attach them on an alpine butterfly. Evan came up and then led the next pitch and tossed the tools back down to me. We then had two more excellent pitches, and decided that the next one should probably be the last pitch as we were running out of time, and weren't sure how much further the waterfall went up.
Evan leads out on our fourth pitch
A snowy look towards pitch five
Me leading pitch 5 (Photo by Evan)
Evan leads out pitch 6
I led the last pitch of the day, which started with some pretty low angle snow and ice that I basically scramble up before making it to some nice thick ice. I started off on a fat bulge to the right, and worked my way up and over to the left following the path of the fall. I placed two screws down lower thinking I could place the third at the upper flat section before the final ice to the top. Sadly, the ice kind of thinned out and was pretty crappy so it didn't take the last screw. I was however able to traverse over a bit and slot a .5 camalot in some rock on the side. I led the last bit near some open running water and rather than getting sticks, I found myself hooking large ice holes instead. I got to the top and anchored into a tree. This was the most difficult place for us to get the tools down since the picth was so long. Evan scrambled to the first screw, and had to come around the side a bit to snag the tools. With that sorted out, he came up and we decided to call it a day. We ended up in an area that had a large pool full of snow, and we able to get on top of the crust and traverse over to an obvious path down the snow. About 15 minutes of plunge stepping got us back to the road.
Me high up on the final pitch (Photo by Evan)
It was an incredible day out on the ice with a fantastic partner. We had a super fun time together, and learned quite a bit about alpine ice climbing (like thin ice can cause you to need to use caution, or sharpen your tools afterwards if you blunted the shit out of them like I did). As evan pointed out, it was also interesting to just go do a route that we didn't know and had zero beta on.