2008 ICC Alpine 1
Saturday-Sunday – June 7-9 2008
Student: Emily Vinding Nyden, Matt Wetzel
Instructors: Carter Nelson, Bill Booth
Route: Argonaut Peak, NW Arete (5.6)
Pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26657904@N08/sets/72157605554197944/
More Pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/MJWetzel/Argonaut

The Route:

We left the badass-refrigerator-equipped-full-of-delicious-beer van at 8:30 AM Sunday and were at the base of the snowfield (yay no slide alder!) at 11:30 AM. Emily and Matt did a good job of getting off the Stuart trail and through the trees/boulders to the base of the snowfield. We noted the wind and possible crappy weather blowing in and decided as a group to kick steps up the coulior to the notch at the base of the NW Arete for the bivy. The snow ended up being bitchin’ styrofoam (man I wish I had my snowboard) snow and we had no problems getting to the ridge. We roped up for a few pitches of ridge scrambling due to the fact that it was all icy choss with death fall potential on either side of the ridge, plus it was gusting to about 40.

Carter/Jared/Brad/Dan did a good job of going on this climb last year and making us a sweet bivy spot right at the start of the route. We were in bed by 8:00 and decided we didn’t have to get up that early since we had a ton of daylight and the rock would be warmer later in the morning.

By morning the wind had died down and the sun was out all day. The route actually has a 5.6 move on at least every pitch and we were all amped to have rock shoes. Emily and Matt climbed well. Carter assisted in making sure we were on-route since he had been on it before. We got box seats for shows on Ice Cliff glacier and Colchuck’s summit. There were people crawling all over everything.

Descending:

The descent for this carryover went a little like this: scramble rock for 50 meters, steep snow traverse for 100 meters, 30 meter rap, scramble another 50, steep coulior to flat snow.

Bill rappelled last. When he pulled the rope, it was eaten by this crack. (http://www.cascadeclimber.com/Argonaut_NW_Arete_Jens_rapping_the_hand-jamb_pitch_July_8_2002.jpg)

After a surprisingly low amount of expletives he tied in to the middle of the rope, had Carter put him on belay and led up to free his rope. It took about 15-20 minutes and he was pretty happy about the whole ordeal. It would have been nice to throw one of the students under the bus here, but it was Bill’s rope so he felt entitled to it. Emily and Matt had climbed below to scope out the steep descent in the South-East-ish coulior. Everyone plunge-stepped down the coulior without incident. It was about 6:00pm by the time we started traversing to colchuck col.

We glissaded almost the entire col down to Colchuck lake. Emily barfed. Carter and Matt hauled wookie to the car and Emily and Bill showed up around 10:40 pm. We probably would have shaved two hours off our arrival time if we’d been quicker on the climbing.

And that’s the difference between Gustav’s and a Chevron dinner. =/