Wham Couloir

Forecasts predicted a good long freeze so Chad and I rolled the dice again at RMNP's tables. Knowing full well that reality or the new snow wild card might leave us just taking the tools for a walk, we rolled out of Westminster at 4am. Twilight comes early these days and 5:30am trail head departures no long need a headlamp. Good thing too, I hadn't been to Loch Vale in a while and was hoping not to get us lost on the short cut trails that exist in winter. I even spotted Kevin's car in the parking lot though our two groups were the only cars to be seen.We followed Kevin and his partners tracks, at least we thought, until somewhere just beyond the Loch but we never saw them. Hope they were out getting after something good.
The short cut trails are melting fast now. Don't fall into the creeks which most of them follow!
Here, just past the Loch, we broke right towards the South Face of Mt.Otis. The well featured face has at least 10 couloirs running up it. We headed towards the prominent pair in the center/right of the photo.
A short bushwhack without too many mistakes found us following Kevin and Ryan's few day old tracks towards a route called C.O.U.S aka Chockstones of Unusual Size. This hard m6-7 route was put up last year and occasionally features a WI4 pillar bypassing the crux first pitch which Kevin had climbed a couple days ago. I liked the look of the pillar and a chance to snag an awesome line but very shortly I realized it was not our day for C.O.U.S. When sun hit the walls above the couloir ice chunks began raining down. Safely tucked between our two options we watched both gully's shed ice as the sun came up. After gearing up it was obvious that the large chunks were all coming out of C.O.U.S and that today Wham was looking much better.
Not a bad place to sit down and gear up for a climb. Sky pond and company pictured below.
I racked up and got ready to tackle the first pitch. This is the water ice start to the Wham Couloir but there wasn't much good ice today. The climbing wasn't bad but it was hard to protect and thus slow for me. I moved carefully and climbed on the far left as much as possible to be sheltered from any ice fall. Finally I peeked around the corner at the top of the ice, saw a good opening, found some decent tool placements and jumped around the corner. Here I was able to move to the right side of the gully away from the fall line and also finally get in a decent piece of pro. I ran out the easy snow climbing on good neve for almost the full rope length. Debating between forcing Chad to simulclimb a little and setting up an unsheltered belay I went with the former option. I found a great #2 camalot placement, pulled a physical move on snice over a chockstone to the left (after finding the right corner completely filled with rotten ice) and made it up 20 more feet of easy snow to a sheltered crack system. I put Chad on belay as quick as possible and before long he joined me at the ledge. I'm sure he was happy to be climbing as it was a bit of a slow lead on a long pitch one.
Knowing that the crux was likely over based on the route description, Chad set off with all the gear and when it continued to be easy climbing I dismantled the belay and we simulclimbed further.
Somewhere up there is Chad. We placed protection between us so that if either of us fell, we would eventually stop, but not as quickly as with a standard belay. The advantage to this when climbing is easy is that falls are still protected but you can move much more quickly. Moving quickly is key in the alpine environment and it also lets you switch back to a standard belay much faster than when soloing since the rope is already out.
Looking back down from a few pitches up.
A nice short ice and mixed section in the middle of the couloir.
Chad bringing me up. When Chad ran out of gear there was only easy ground to the top so we stowed the rope and rack and finished up unroped.
An over the shoulder view from near the top of the couloir.
Chad finishing up some easy mixed ground.
Sunrise starting to warm the upper couloir.
Looking back down on Zowie and Wham towers. They look like fantastic rock climbs for this summer.
Looking down the route from the top.
Once we topped out we had to find our way down. Luckily the snow was not too soft yet and we down climbed through the obvious notch in the center/left of the photo.
Then we got some wet glissades down back towards the Loch. A little bit of switchbacking to find an easy line, some postholing and a few more glissades and we found ourselves sneaking around a fast melting Loch to the trail.
Looking back at the Loch. If anyone is just looking for a beautiful hike in the summer, it's about ~3 miles to Loch Vale and there is a good trail up Andrews Creek as well (goes past what we climbed). Until the next good weather day...

Sometimes you just go for a walk

2 am alarm and another bleary eyed drive past Estes Park to a quiet and empty parking lot, save for my partners car. We stow puffies and hide car keys. I take one of the ropes and a stash of cams and shove them into my pack. It's always much heavier once the rope has to come along. A few minutes of hiking along the dark trail and the snow becomes continuous thanks to a fresh dump of another couple feet a few days before. Kevin dons skis and skins and begins to shush up the trail. The winter short cut trails are still firm and we follow a creek up the valley. It doesn't take long to reach our first lake and here my eyes grow green. Skis leave almost no trace of their passage while I immediately start to sink in the untracked snow. I boot straight across the lake until I reach the outlet of the following lake and punch through. Looking in the hole I see water. Damn. Then the other foot goes in. Crap. I jump out and find some firmer ground. Luckily I was wearing the gaiters today and my feet are mostly dry. I dig out the slowshoes and strap them on. We have a long way to go and I was foolish hoping not to need them.

With no trail we begin to follow the winter route towards Black Lake. A minor wrong turn and soon we're once again following the creek. Kevin leads the way and before long headlamps grow unnecessary. Sadly we must break away from the easy route and soon begin our climb up to Solitude Lake. A monster hill looms above us as we wind our way through the trees and small cliffs towards our destination. After too many self created switchbacks we reach the bench below the lake. While the hours long approach was brutal, the reward is access to a place very few people probably venture in these conditions.
I find Kevin sitting under a boulder, eating and starring at our objective; the north face of Arrowhead and a route called Sister Sweetly. Rarely climbed but supposedly reasonable for our skills. Kevin was just here climbing a route to the left, the Hourglass Couloir. They found difficult conditions but his pictures and the previous week's weather had left us optimistic. Reality found us feeling differently. We pieced together a line up the face but even if we were generous on what we thought might be ice, we couldn't make the top section go. Apparently the whole route ices up sometimes but not this day.

Our next surprise came during our silent contemplation of what to do next. Tink tink tink. Though it was early and still cool, the sound of rock and ice fall was unmistakable and continuous. Some careful scanning of the wall nailed the location right near our 2nd option couloir. Great. In fact the sounds of the face cleaning itself would continue non-stop the entire time we were in the cirque.
I think both of us had the wind taken out of our sails a bit but we rallied up a new plan, to go quickly solo our intended descent route and at least summit Arrowhead. On our hike over we spied another gully that looked shorter but nicely inset and shaded. A quick walk back to grab some protection and we soloed up the approach slope, set a belay, flaked the rope and...
almost immediately got shut down again. The powder cone from all the sloughs was so deep it was almost unclimbable and certainly not very fun. After a valiant swimming effort we decided today was not our day.
Time to coil the rope and go home.
It wasn't a total waste of time of course, views like this are worth all the effort and we spied lines all over worth of future exploration.
We post holed back to our boulder and cache of stuff, ate a bit more food and prepared to head back to town.
Skis and snowshoes were waiting for the descent and I got a head start knowing that Kevin would catch me quickly while he glided and I slogged.
Longs and the Trough were looking nice. The wind was light and we both realized that we had just chosen wrong this morning. We should have been up climbing keyhole ridge (a primarily rock route). Lesson learned for future trips.
Goodbye Solitude Lake, I'll be back.
The walk out went quickly but I was still jealous of the skis. Luckily thanks to a friend I will have my own pair of approach skis very soon. At least the views continued to be excellent while postholeing to my waist in snowshoes.
Once across the fast melting lake we began to run into the hiking crowds again.
This meant packed trails and a good bye to my snowshoes.
We clicked off the remaining miles to the car and headed into Estes for some lunch and a beer to drown our sorrows. Conversation already included talk of a return trip.

Window

With an impending spring storm looming, Chad and I rolled out of Denver before the sun came up. A nice 30 minute hike up the hill and Mt.Lincoln's Scottish Gully was all ours. Chad racked up for his first ever ice lead.
Time to go get em.
Lincoln was still fat. Might have to go June ice climbing just for the heck of it.
Putting in a screw.
Topping out the bulge on pitch one.
I followed up to the anchor and led up the headwall to the top for pitch 2. A quick walk down and Chad led another line bringing us back to the top.
We walked down again and ran another lap up the main gully, this time on a steeper line. I led it all as one pitch with Chad simul-climbing the last 10m or so. The start was easy goofing around on the dead tree rest.
3 near vertical sections kept it interesting but I managed never to get pumped or cold hands all day. Got to keep practicing that technique. As one pitch it's not a bad 70m of climbing.
The sun even came out for us off and on. By 11am we'd had enough laps and headed out to beat the storm and make it back in time for Marni, baby and my doctor's appointment. Everything is going well and little JJ is growing nicely. Only a few more months until we get to meet him!
Someday I can't wait to bring him up here to meet Mr.Goat and friends.

Martha

I'm having a hard time finding my words but I miss regular blogging so I guess I better suck it up and find a way to write some stuff anyway. At least I have some pictures. This is from a few weeks ago when Chad, my avalanche buddy, and I hiked our butts up to the Chasm Lake cirque to climb a couloir called Martha. I climbed it last year when I was really quite a new climber and it was great to come back a year later and see the difference.

The approach is maybe 5 miles but well worth it. After a minor false start following snowshoer tracks we popped out above the trees.Sun is coming up earlier and earlier these days. That means the alarm goes off darn early for alpine starts.
To the right of my head you can see the couloir Chad and I were avalanched down. It's the 2nd wide snow band from the bottom right of the picture. If you zoom in you can see where it begins to narrow significantly. We went from ~50 feet below the narrow part all the way down the wide part more or less. Note to everyone, don't do that.
The Diamond looks mighty impressive from down here.
We were at the well frozen lake in no time and hiked across much to Marni's excitement on the SPOT. "You looked like you were in the middle of the lake so I thought the SPOT was wrong." Time to gear up. I donned my harness and the rack and began to drag the rope up the hill.
I headed for the shady gully climbing bomber snow and a nice easy ice/mixed band. Somewhere above I found my first piece of gear while Chad was already simul-climbing.
The wide part of the couloir was easy but still filled with some deep powder snow. I put in the stairs and was happy to find occasional rock pro in the couloir walls as the angled kicked towards 50 degrees, just in case.
Still happy simul-climbing, Chad was somewhere below at the end of the rope. I hugged the left edge of the couloir until it finally narrowed back up and the loose snow depth decreased.
After running the rope up to just below the crux sections I was out of gear due to our small rack. I brought Chad up, collected the gear from him and headed up again.
I tried an interesting left line but it turned out more difficult than I thought so I down climbed and headed right instead.
Chad following the route.
Nice and narrow now.
The crux ice section was thin but I got a stubby screw in and fired it easily. Quite a big difference from a year ago when I was nervous just following Juan's lead with much fatter ice!
I built a quick belay so that Chad would have one climbing the cruxes and brought him up. The view certainly was nice and we were topped out before the sun hit the main couloir which was perfect.
Chad finishing up some great ice, snow and mixed climbing.
Heh, cold hands aka the hot aches or screaming barfies. Don't overgrip your tools kids.
The route beyond this point is easy so I sent Chad up to the safety of the rocks above while I broke down the belay. The snow was bomber up here too, just starting to warm in the sun.
Up in those rocks we stripped our crampons and harnesses and put the rope and rack away. A short 3rd class scramble brought us to the summit of Mt. Lady Washington. After a quick lunch we hiked and glissaded back to the car. Round trip was ~7:45 which was sure better than the 7 hour descent alone time it took us to get down with our matching broken ankles!
There are about a half a dozen routes pictured in the photo below that I hope to do this year alone including my first trip up the huge face (The Diamond) in the left center of the photo. The route Marni and I climbed last July is the right edge of the Diamond down to the lower right snowfields. Hard to believe why Longs Peak is so popular :)