| Summary | None |
| Owner | Eric Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2013-02-04 18:21:28 UTC-0500 |
| Description | Mt Osceola North Slide Alpine Climbing
February 3, 2013 8am – 10pm Heikki Ruuska, Hanna Levitin, Yeuhi Abe, Jacob Sargent, Mike Collins, Eric Gilbertson 1 mile road-walking 5 miles trail hiking ~1 miles bushwacking 11 pitches of ice climbing 2 summits (Osceola and East Osceola) We started hiking up the East Pond trail at 8am and soon encountered our first obstacle – a wide melted-out stream. Luckily we’d brought snowshoes so could tiptoe across an icy part without poking through. We started bushwacking east after about a mile and soon met up with the north slide drainage. Snow cover was extremely low after last week’s big melt, but that meant even more ice was exposed than normal. Heikki and I each led three-person teams up the first steep ice bulge, then we short-roped using kiwi-coils to walk to the second bulge. The second bulge was about 30ft tall and definitely the steepest pitch of the day. On top of this bulge we found some snow drifts to practice using snow pickets and dead-men anchors, then continued climbing up the slide. Amazingly the entire slide, which is often skiable in late season, was mostly devoid of snow. This led to a full 11 pitches of WI2/3 ice climbing leading to almost the very top of the slide. Our teams were very efficient, finishing some pitches in only 30 minutes. We reached the top of the slide just at sunset, then bushwacked the last quarter mile to the summit. The hike back over East Osceola was a fun mix of glissading and cramponing, and we returned to the cars at 10pm for a solid 14-hr day. |