| Summary | None |
| Owner | Eric Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2010-03-10 23:09:43 UTC-0500 |
| Description | Eric Gilbertson, Matthew Gilbertson, Fanny Mas, Yves Matton
3.6.2010-3.7.2010 Author:Eric We started from Appalachia and hiked into King Ravine on Saturday morning. The parking lot was just crawling with hikers and cars were overflowing into the road. Probably because it was the first good-weather weekend in the last month. Luckily this meant the trail was broken for us into the ravine. We got in to the base of the climb around noon and started roping up. Great Gully is a grade 2 ice climb in lean snow years, but this time all the ice was covered up so a pure snow climb. We roped up anyway to practice running belays and placing snow pickets. I led and put in some rock pro and even one ice screw where the snow was thin in the middle of the gully. When I started running low on gear and began making an anchor I saw a skier appear out of nowhere and then two more. Luckily they saw us in time to stop. They waited for us to climb out of the narrow part and then skied past us. From here the gully wasn't as steep and we just climbed up unroped with ice axes. We were looking around for a campsite out of the wind and it was tough because the wind was from the north and the lee side of Mt Adams was just a big cliff. Eventually we decided to camp near Madison hut for a little shelter. Matthew and Yves began digging snow caves in a huge drift while I set up a tent just in case. As it turned out Matthew made the ceiling a bit too thin and a tiny airhole soon expanded into a 3-ft diameter hole from the constant 60mph wind above. The same wind snatched our stove bag away and flung it into oblivion. Luckily we had the tent to fall back on and Matthew and I rode out the night in that while Fanny and Yves stayed in the other snow cave. The next morning we woke up to see the sunrise near star lake and amazingly found our stove bag! It had filled with snow and that must have weighted it down. We hiked down that morning and had enough time to stop by IME on the way back for some mountaineering gear. |