A long Thanksgiving break lent itself well to bigger plans- Why not Borah? After meeting Ralph for some spare tools (Thank you Ralph!), Max and I hit the road for a cold and clear night at Joe T. Fallini. The thermometer in the car when we pulled up read 10, and it got a whole lot colder. The next morning we took it slow, toured around Doublesprings, and ended up leaving Rock Creek around 2. Bad move?
Yes.
The going was slow, the snow was fresh and deeper than we would have liked, and we opted to take the tent instead of the planned bivy sacks after the freezing night in the campground. After picking our way up the drainage, the sun went down and we made camp at around 9500'. The next morning we got our first proper look at the face-
We took the Hidden Couloir to "Classic" finish.
Had there not been 8-12' of fresh powder, the ice would have been perfect, top to bottom. Instead, the snow was in fact there, and very unconsolidated.
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| Looking up Hidden |
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| Looking down Hidden |
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| Perfect ice! Under snow. Tool for scale |
We simuled most of the lower face, stopping twice to switch over kit and warm the hands. When we reached the final couloir it was 3pm. A little late. The last few pitches looked perfect- with the exception of the last fifty feet- which consisted of house-of-cards rocks covered in a few inches of loose snow.
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| Textbook terrain belay! |
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| Getting steeper- |
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| Final pitches- We went right |
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| Topping out into the sunset! |
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| Looking down the last 50' |
We topped out the face at about 5:30, which this time of year means sundown. Time to dig in. We stayed in the last notch before the summit on the NW ridge at 12,300', barely out of the wind. After a sleepless night, we set off in the morning to get up and get down.
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