We set off from Vancouver on friday night and managed to get to the Keiths Hut parking lot by around 8:30. Not bad time for having left Vancouver around 5. We grabbed our kit and started the ski in under a fantastically clear night, which we knew wouldn't last for long with a large front moving up Howe sound. The almost full moon lit up the snow filled meadows with thousands of little stars and made for a very asthetic, though icy skin to the hut.
Waking to our alarms early the next morning we set out heading to the moraine that would take us to a shelf just below our intended access to the east ridge.
The snow was shit with an awefull crust that when punctured revealed about 6 inches of loose unconsolidated snow. After gaining the ridge we continued to ski up to the point where the ridge significantly steepens. We threw our crampons on and started kicking our way up a nice 40 deg slope which was plenty hard after a couple of weeks with no snow but plenty of wind.
We crested the point where me and Scotty had dropped off the ridge on the previous trip around 9:30am, so far we were making great time while watching the weather front move in on us.
We could tell that after this point the ridge became a bit more technical with some mixed rock and much sharper terrain features. We climbed the first couple false horizons on ~55 deg snow with no trouble, just an amazing view and it wasn't till about 10:30 that we reached our first mixed ground.
I threw in a decent nut and a bomber knifeblade and set Nick up for the lead. We had only brought an 8mm, 30 M rope so hopefully the pitch wouldn't be to long. Nick headed up with ease and I got some great shots of him from the belay stance. He ended up using the whole 30M and managed to set up a sweet belay from the top of a small snowy spire.
Snowy Spire
After seconding and cleaning the couple of piecies from the pitch I set off traversing across a fine knifeblade. This would connect the lower rocky portion to the upper portion where we would need to make our rappel. We found a rap station all set up and discussed the logic of rapping to another block since we didn't feel our one 30M rope would make it. I lead the way down and found some excellent snowy ramps that would allow us to rap right onto a little snowy shoulder without having to set up a second station. It appears that the 30M rope was just the right length!
By this time we had really started to notice the weather was picking up and blowing us in just about every direction. We started up the last portion of the east ridge and met up with the northeast face (standard route) up Matier and took a few moments to debate the weather. After considering the current white out conditions and extreme wind we decided that tagging the summit wasn't worth the risk.
We started heading down and I noticed that the wind had deposited enough snow to make it ski-able. So as Nick finished the boot pack down I strapped on my ski's and had a fun and quick descent to the Joffree/Matier Col. Before we new it we were skiing down the glacier right back to Kieths hut. We were home in about an hour.
We spent the remainder of the night hanging out with a bunch of cool kids and enjoying the luxurious Keiths hut.
After seconding and cleaning the couple of piecies from the pitch I set off traversing across a fine knifeblade. This would connect the lower rocky portion to the upper portion where we would need to make our rappel. We found a rap station all set up and discussed the logic of rapping to another block since we didn't feel our one 30M rope would make it. I lead the way down and found some excellent snowy ramps that would allow us to rap right onto a little snowy shoulder without having to set up a second station. It appears that the 30M rope was just the right length!
By this time we had really started to notice the weather was picking up and blowing us in just about every direction. We started up the last portion of the east ridge and met up with the northeast face (standard route) up Matier and took a few moments to debate the weather. After considering the current white out conditions and extreme wind we decided that tagging the summit wasn't worth the risk.
We started heading down and I noticed that the wind had deposited enough snow to make it ski-able. So as Nick finished the boot pack down I strapped on my ski's and had a fun and quick descent to the Joffree/Matier Col. Before we new it we were skiing down the glacier right back to Kieths hut. We were home in about an hour.
We spent the remainder of the night hanging out with a bunch of cool kids and enjoying the luxurious Keiths hut.
1 comment:
YEAH BUDDY!!! What an awesome trip. Nice TR for it as well, I'll forward you a link to mine when I get it up...er I mean posted.
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