We drove up Sunday Am in the pouring rain wondering what the hell we were doing. Jon got up @ 3:30 and my alarm failed & he woke me up banging on the front door @ 5:00 am. I think around 10:00 we were getting dressed to climb it was still raining. We huffed up to the cliff and the rain stopped and it was almost warm. at least for ice climbing). We climbed at the cascade practice wall and JDW did 3 leads and much to my surprise after 2 years off I did 2 leads. Felt real solid almost like i never took all the time off. First several Pics from Sunday @ Cascade.
Steve on lead Sunday
Sharp stuff
ICE climbing - Just some of the sharp & pointy stiff..
Steve - up above
Jed after the rain - sun's out now and cool reflectios on the ice
JDW heading up - Don't look up it may poke your eye out !!!
Monday it was snowing like crazy -->> Don was sick so Jed joined us - we hiked into The North Face of Pitchoff and JDW & I each lead one route -- Tendonitis & Arm and Hammer . Stuff got soaked then the temps dove and the ropes became frozen cables. Three days later they were still wet in my cellar with a fan drying them out.. I just coiled them today ( New years eve). Good thing we had two sets of ropes for this trip.
Monday @ NFPO
Tuesday -- COLD cold - Did I say COLD ..........
SIX below Zero and the wind whipping like crazy, wind shield musta been 20+ below . We all dressed with lots of layers and parked @ Chapel pond and hiked into the BEER WALL canyon. ICE looked a bit thin @ Lions so we went in deeper Don & Jed stopped @ ICE slot/ Shot what ever it was -- we went way back to Positive Reinforcement - It was HUGE FAT and some NASTY candled / chandeliered sections. JDW did first lead as he had never been here before & I have climbed here several times as far back as 1994 I think. Oh yea I forgot to the right of the ice we climbed at SIX below water was flowing down the cliff....... YES open flowing water at 6 below it had steam coming off the water - very cool .... Two other guys showed up so this guy Chris lead a route similar to what JDW just did and I did a line left and sorta straight up Both climbing at the same time -- ½ way up the ice got so rotten I had to hack away 12-18” Old candled blobs that would not hold my weight at all to get good sticks and get screws in. It was a lot of work on top of dead vert. After those two climbs we hiked out to ICE SLOT/ SHOT and JDW did the last lead of the trip . It was getting colder and we had a long drive home so off we went……………………
Last climb we did Tue .....
JDF on - Positive Reinforcement in very cold conditions
Positive Reinforcement - just before we climbed it.......-
1 comment:
I don't think I'm ready for this!
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