Colchuck Peak (7/1/11)

After driving north Tuesday, hiking in Wednesday and resting in camp Thursday, Friday was summit day!!

The sprinkles stopped, the sky cleared and the wind died... time to strap on the crampons, grab the ice axes and head up the Colchuck Glacier.

Colchuck is the peak on the right side of the photo below, Dragontail is the peak on the left. Our route began by ascending the glacier between the two peaks. Ready to leave camp: We could see our camp on the left side of the lake the whole way up to the Colchuck/Dragontail Col: We took a break at the top of the glacier to grab a snack and take pictures. The snow on the glacier remained nice and firm in the shadow of Dragontail, which made for good cramponing. Because the snow above the col does not benefit from this shade and is exposed to lots of early morning sun, it was unpleasantly soft by the time we got there and made for slow going.

We tried to stay on the exposed ridges to avoid the soft snow, but scrambling over the boulders was fairly tedious. Classic case of six of one, half-a-dozen of the other.

We finally reached the summit block and easily climbed to the top, revealing magnificent views of the mountain ranges all around us. Check out the 360-degree video Brad shot at the top:

Mount Stuart in the background. Brad and friend Tim plan to climb that later this month:

Shortly before the trip, I realized that it was my 10th summit (of different mountains)!! WOOHOO :) The weather was perfect and the view spectacular, so we took our time on the summit. By the time we headed down the snow was VERY soft. Fortunately, the group behind us had left a nice bootpack for us to follow down to the col. Liz postholing to her hip: We planned all along to return to the col and then climb Dragontail before descending to camp. But the extremely poor snow conditions prompted us to play it safe and stick with the one peak.

Descending the glacier was less pleasant because the snow was too slippery to go without crampons, but not soft enough to plunge step. This meant dealing with snow balling up on the bottoms of our crampons by whacking our feet with our ice axes to knock the balls of snow off with every step. Neglecting to knock the snow off would result in huge balls of snow on the bottoms of our feet, which had the affect of unexpectedly stepping on ball bearings. This is not good on a steep slope.

We were so engrossed in this tedious and delicate task that we neglected to take any pictures during the glacier descent. I think it's time to invest in some anti-balling plates for our crampons. We did get in some decent glissading toward the bottom where it was less steep, which was a welcome relief.

After returning to camp, we laid out all our wet gear, took sponge baths and chowed down on some much-needed calories. Then I retreated to the tent with my book while Brad played with his camera some more. It was a gorgeous day and a good, hard climb. We slept well that night!

(this was a joint post by Liz and Brad) :)