The day after Thanksgiving my friend Brendan and I headed into the Stuart range to kick off our winter climbing season. Motivated by some pretty pictures and beta on CascadeClimbers.com we decided to head out despite a miserable forecast, some suffering would make us stronger. We made it up the first couloir in the Triple couloir's route before turning around at the base of the runnels. The runnels were thin but forming! We were short on time and I wasn't to stoked on leading in those harder mixed conditions.
A leisurely approach got us to Colchuck lake in about 2 hours. Arriving around noon we had plenty of time to explore and look at our different route options, we had originally planned on climbing Colchuck's NE couloir but a close look at Triple couloirs on Dragontail had us excited. The base of NEC on Colchuck looked pretty challenging. Armed with 4 cams, 3 superstubby screws, a set of nuts and a few pins we figured we were fairly prepared for anything. After looking around and taking pictures we headed back to camp wondering how the weather would play into our decision.
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| Hurry up Lance! photo by Brendan Smith |
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| Boulders.....Huge boulders photo by Brendan Smith |
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| Second Couloir is obvious |
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| Whad up Colchuck Lake? |
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| Colchuck looking very frosty |
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| First Couloir |
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| base of the NEC on Colchuck |
After our afternoon scouting mission we headed back to camp where some shenigans went down. We only had brought 4oz of fuel thinking we could get water out of the lake....turns out the lake was frozen so much time was wasted chopping through 6 inches of ice. Luckily we were well prepared with ice tools. Then we did some bouldering. It was rad. After our little boulder sesh we settled in to bed around 6:30pm! It was dark and there was nothing to do!
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| Alpine Bouldering? photo by Brendan Smith |
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| Second Ascent! GRADE CONFIRMED |
The next morning Brendan wakes me up at 5:30am to rain and wind. I had to go pee anyway so I got out of the tent and yes, it definitely was raining, I could see one or two stars but the tops of Dragontail and Colchuck were being assaulted by massive dark masses of clouds. I jumped back in the tent and we decided to wait awhile and see if the weather changed neither of us had any desire to go climbing in the freezing rain. Around 7:30 the rain had died down but the wind was whipping our tent around, our campsite was so protected I didn't want to imagine what it was like up higher. So he waited some more. Finally around 9:30 I woke up and crawled out of my warm sleeping bag. The weather was great! Some lingering clouds but no rain and little wind! Now I was pretty mad with myself, thinking I must be the laziest alpine climber who has ever existed. Sleeping in till 9:30! I didn't say much to Brendon as I packed up climbing gear, put my harness on and stormed off towards Aasgard pass. I was determined to climb something that day. There was an interesting looking ice flow or we could go check out the Triple Couloirs.
Halfway up Aasgard pass I asked Brendan what he felt like doing. He pointed at the massive couloir on Dragontail and said "lets go check it out". I was hoping he would say something like that! So off we went. We arrived at the base around 10:45am and decided we would only climb as high as we could easily escape not wanting to commit ourselves to an epic night with a burly storm forecasted to strike in the next 12 hours.
Finally we were climbing! Time to get rowdy!
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| Lance climbing the first step into the first couloir. Photo by Brendon Smith |
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| Brendan approaching my belay |
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| Brendan pulling through the second steep step around the chockstone cave |
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| Looking up to the top of the first couloir |
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| Looking at what we thought might be the runnels |
We decided to head down.
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| Brendan starting to downclimb |
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| Yes, I forgot chapstick |
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| Prepping to rappel photo by Brendan Smith |
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| Most awkward rappel ever! |
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| More downclimbing |
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| A last rappel. Much faster and safer than down climbing |
Once off the route we cruised back to our camp as it began to rain. We both agreed today was a success and I felt a little better about being a lazy piece of shit that morning. Breaking down camp went quickly and off we went slipping and sliding down the trail back to the TH.
