Cody Ice 2013

The final, money pitch of Joy After Pain.  Photo by Dale Apgar.

With three straight years of ice climbing in Montana or Wyoming over New Year's, it was clear that the tradition would continue. Dale and I met up in Billings on the Friday after Christmas, spent a quick night in a hotel there, and woke up early to drive down to Cody. We provisioned ourselves with ~4 days and 3 nights of food, then busted out the Southfork Road towards the ice.

With the groceries chilling out in the car and after a little trailhead lunch, we hiked in for the Schoolhouse Route. We didn't have a ton of time, but also didn't expect to do more than the first few pitches. It was a solid 1.5 hours to the first ice pitch, especially since there hadn't been much snow yet and there was quite a bit of unconsolidated dirt to scamper across in between trying not to take a digger on the iced over stream.

View to a Thrill

We fired the first three pitches, trading leads and having a blast getting back into the swing of things. We descended during sunset, finished the hike with headlamps, and then headed for our bunkhouse at the Double Diamond X Ranch, which turned out to be all of a three-minute drive from our trailhead. Bonus!

The DDX Ranch was a great venue for our adventure. It was just the two of us in the 6-person bunkhouse, so we spread out our stuff, made dinner, drank whiskey, and talked plans for our upcoming trip to Patagonia.

We had ambitious plans to climb View to a Thrill on our second day and did the full approach to get there. Things were pretty warm in the sun and lots of ice was falling from Dressed to Kill. We quickly did the approach pitch and had a long look at the pillar above us. It was well attached, but looked pretty sun-baked. Dale went scouting and decided it didn't look safe, so we bailed, hiked down, and got a pitch in on Slogger before hiking out at dusk. Better safe than sorry.

With our experience on the South-facing side of the canyon the day before, we decided that the North-facing climbs would be a better bet and we were right. The Lower Bench was in to an extent that hadn't been true in 5+ years. We ticked off The One Hitter that next day, then headed back for Joy After Pain after that.

Joy After Pain looked stellar from below and it did not disappoint. A steep 60-meter pitch led to a steeper pillar, then a series of shorter pitches up the drainage to a spot with two falls. We climbed the right side, rappelled, then climbed the left side and kept heading up. We were rewarded. After a last quick pitch, we arrived at the base of a huge curtain of ice. Dale had a crampon front-point failure and I wasn't about to turn the pitch down. It started out steep on a pillar and then got on top of some mushrooms before running to the top in a shallow depression with good stemming feet on either side. It was definitely my proudest lead to date. I was psyched, especially after climbing ~5 pitches already that day and being on our 4th day of climbing.

We celebrated New Year's Eve with the ranch proprietor and his daughter briefly, put a dent in our whiskey, and talked gear for Patagonia until pretty late. With only one set of functioning crampons, we decided to do Ice Fest on our last day, which is a great 60m+ pitch of steep ice above the Flying H Ranch. Dale borrowed my crampons for the lead and then I seconded. It was a perfect cap on the trip. We hiked out, stopped in Cody for brew pub deliciousness, had another quick night in Billings, and then headed home, knowing that we'd see each other again in about 10 days down in El Calafate.

NE Buttress on Chair Peak

Two winters ago, in mid-December, Dale and I headed up to Chair Peak to see about the North Face.  At the time, there was no ice and enough new snow that things were pretty sketchy, so we bailed.

With a major cold snap in Seattle over the past couple weeks, ice was likely.  Kelsey needed to be back to Seattle for a holiday party on Saturday night, so we decided a bigger day on Baker's North Ridge wasn't in the cards.  Instead, the two of us snagged another group of two in Tom and Smitty and we headed up to Chair early on Saturday morning.

It was frigid as we left the car before 8am.  Frigid not being a relative PNW thing.  Frigid being -4F or so.  The approach took us about 2.5 hours and we met up with two groups near the Thumb Tack who had turned around before getting on the route due to a hollow-sounding approach.  Turned out they were trying to go directly to the base and not around, via the ridge.  We took the standard approach and found it to be fine.

Upon reaching the base of the route, we found one party of two starting up.  The leader called down from mid-way through the first pitch that the climbing was "awesome."  We went from thinking things would be unlikely to thinking it would go.  I led up P1 a few minutes behind their second climber.  Things were quite cold in the shade, but the climbing was secure and the few pieces of protection (old pin, old slung cordage, screw, and cam) in the ~65m pitch seemed solid.

I set up a belay on the tree ledge in the sun and brought Kelsey up while by hands thawed out.  From there, we headed straight for the ice step, getting good steps in ice and styrofoam snow.  We finished the pitch with some simul-climbing and had a picket in the middle that felt pretty solid.  I set up a belay off a screw and a picket just below and to the side of the ice step, then brought Kelsey up.  We'd passed the other party during that pitch as they had split it into two bits while we'd simul-climbed with our 70m rope.  Kelsey was cruising this thing like it was nothing.

The ice step was super fun.  I popped in a couple of screws for good measure with screamers on them and then pulled the step to hit the styrofoam snow above.  Things sounded a little slabby and hollow, but the snow stayed together and I got a picket in about 40m through the pitch.  The rope let us get within about 30 feet of the tiny trees on the summit ridge before we had to simul-climb again.  I slung a tree when I could and had Kelsey come up again before we finished up towards the summit and met back up with the other party.  The views were absurd—visibility was off the charts.

We had hoped to rap with Tom and Smitty, but we hadn't seen them since the start of P1, so we assumed they had turned back and we rapped with our new friends who had smartly brought doubles.  After a little down-climbing, a rap, a stuck rope, and another rap, we down-climbed the steep edge of the bowl and finally ended up back at the Thumb Tack.  Just a little over an hour from there and we were back at the car.  Some jogging was done.

Except Tom and Smitty weren't at the car.  After some moments of panic and a discussion with the County Sherrif to determine if SAR would be needed, they appeared about 1.5 hours later.  Turned out they made it up to the second pitch before bailing, which took quite a while.  Whew. That would have been an exceptionally cold night.

West Face on North Early Winters Spire

Following on the crux pitch

Washington Pass packs a whole bunch of awesome alpine granite climbing into a tight, easy-to-access location.  With only a couple of routes up there under my belt so far, the opportunity to have a beautiful fall day on the West Face was easy to say yes to.

Goran and I drove up from Seattle on Friday night, getting to the Blue Lake Trailhead around midnight.  We rolled our sleeping bags out in the parking lot and hopped in them quickly since it was quite cold.  The morning brought a solid frost and cold temps in the shade, so we waited for a while before heading up.  The approach went quickly in about an hour and we started climbing through the first two pitches (linked) in the shade.  By the time I started leading pitched 3 and 4, the sun was peeking around onto the face.  Cold hands and feet gave way to comfort as I pulled past the tat on the flake and into
the layback 5.9+ section.

Goran tried his hand at the crux and did really well, only popping off a couple of times when his feet smeared off.  I took it from there and had an absolute blast pulling up the off-vertical 5.10c crack with good holds every so often.  I had enough rope, so I ran it all the way to the top anchor, which ended up being a full 70m pitch.  Stellar!