| Summary | |
| Owner | Eric Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2010-04-13 20:57:36 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Eric Gilbertson, Ben Pope, Bryan Palmintier
2.13-2.15 Author: Eric On Saturday we hiked in to the great gulf and set up camp at spaulding lake, with the intention of climbing wait-until-dark gully (grade 3 ice) up to Mt Clay the next day. The skies were clear when we got to bed and we had had a good view of the gully, which looked pretty fun. Sunday morning a storm started blowing in and it was snowing and very windy. We decided to try out the gully nevertheless. At the base of the ice when we were starting to rope up we kept noticing spindrifts of snow starting to cover us. We could't even see the top of the ice, and started to worry about snow stability above the ice where it was a major terrain trap, so we bailed out. We then started traversing at the same level toward washington looking for a safer gully to climb. We passed all sorts of super vertical mixed routes (that would not be fun in those conditions), and then finally saw a gully with a more southerly aspect that was not so wind loaded. I think this was actually called the great gulf headwall. This was shallow enough to climb unroped and was all snow but still pretty fun. We topped out near mount Clay and were immediately blasted by really strong winds. The visibility was terrible but we could barely make out from cairn to cairn so we pressed on toward the northern presidentials. It was tough walking and I could hardly keep going in a straight path. We later learned the winds were sustained at 70mph with gusts in the 80s. That's why I was nearly knocked over several times. Our intent was to hike until we found a sheltered place and camp there, and the first place ended up being the side of Madison Hut. We found a nice place on the lee side of the hut and dug into a big snow drift there to pitch our tent. In hindsight that was a terrible idea - that snow drift was there for a reason and putting our tent there ensured we would get drifted on all night. We didn't realize this error until we were already set up and cooking in the vestibule. The snow kept drifting in even under the rain fly and extinguishing the stoves. We weren't about to get out and find another spot, so we just slept there and dealt with it. In the morning our packs and shoes in the vestibules were covered in snow, and we all learned not to make that mistake again. The weather monday was still cloudy but with a bit better visibility than the day before. We summitted Madison and then headed back down the Osgood trail back to the trailhead for a big northern presidential loop. |