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Kris Haskins Staff Webpage |
Guye Peak - South Gully |
| February 7th 2009 |
The plan for this climb started a couple of months ago when Jeff Walters and I decided it had been way too long since we had climbed together. Actually, we had never climbed together in the alpine so this was to be our first trip. After making plans and having them fall through a couple of times, we were finally able to get together and do a climb. We chose to to the South Gulley of Guye.
We tried to gather as much info as we could about the route, and it seemed like it would be a pretty enjoyable climb(with a still unknown descent). I had been up to the top before via the improbable(inadvisable) traverse, and ended up having quite the epic. Still, we figured that once we got to the top, we would be able to find the way down.
Jeff and his Girlfriend Henley arrived at my house on Friday night around 1, and we sorted gear and got to bed at about 2AM. I was woken up by my alarm at 5, and started brewing some coffee and took a shower. After eating a quick breakfast, we were out the door a little after 6 and on the way up to Snoqualmie pass. We arrived at the Alpental Parking lot around 7 and started putting on gear.
Guye Peak
At the base of the gulley, I began kicking steps up the slope. The snow was in perfect condition, just hard enough to allow for good steps but not so hard that the steps were hard to kick. We raced up the first part of the gully, and stopped where there was a fork. We figured the left hand side was the south rib, and continued right to the other obvious looking gully. At this point, we took out the crampons and our ice tools. The gully was mostly snow covered, but there were some exposed rock and vegetation bands as well. We stayed to the right and ended up going over some hard snow, mixed rock and heather, sod and pure rock climbing. We stayed unroped, but some of the climbing was probably low fifth class. Also, we didn't really see too much in the way of great protection, and we were both pretty confident in our climbing. After a while of this, we reached a strange looking rock gully/chimney that looked kind of loose and awful, so we headed right up some more snow. We gained a little flatish area, and stopped for a snack.
Jeff Negotiates some rock
Jeff "Climbs" Some snow
Happy on the flat area
Obligitory self photography
Starting off again, we went up some more mixed snow and rock bands. We were getting great sticks in the snow/ice crust and we were also taking advantage of good sticks in sod, heather and at one point a downed tree. The climbing was fantastic and we were really enjoying ourselves. After going up a little chimney, we found ourselves looking at some steeper snow with more consequences if we fell. The sun was also shining brightly, and we worried that the solid snow might loosen up a bit so we decided to break out the rope. We doubled one of the half ropes we brought, and Jeff led out placing a couple of pickets and slinging trees. I gave him a belay until he reached the end of the rope and then we started simuling. A couple of hundred feet later, we were all grins on the summit.
Negotiating rock bands
Jeff Leads out
And I follow
Jeff Nearing the Summit
We lounged on the top for a while eating and taking in the views on an absolutely perfect day. It had taken us about 4 hours to make it to the top. We saw some tracks traversing the summits, and decided to follow them hoping to find the descent path. We came up over a ridge and saw a large party on one of the summits and decided they probably left the way behind them in the snow. We headed across a cornice and up another steep snow slope until we found terrain that I was familiar with. I knew we went up and over, but I though rapping down off towards the commenwealth and climbing back up some more steep snow was the way to go. We ended up seeing some people coming up the gully we were about to rap into, and it turned out to be a couple of Jeffs friends from the Boalps. They told us the snow finger would go, so we rapped down and then climbed up to join them.
Me Traversing the Cornice
Rainier from the summit
From here it was easy snow walking back down and we ran into the party we had seen on the summit. They were celebrating someones 40th bday by doing a group hike, pretty rad. They told us about the way they had come up, and we decided to follow it back down through the commonwealth rather than try to traverse over to the Alpental parking lot. We didn't want to end up doing the same thing I did last time. It was a pretty long and boring downclimb, but we made it safely back to the car.
This was an absolutely gorgeous day in the mountains, and I was so happy to finally get out with Jeff!