| Big Horn Peak Ice Trip Report |
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| Big Horn Peak Ice   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Wyoming, United States, North America GPX File: Download GPX » View Route on Map Date Climbed/Hiked: Jun 4, 2011 Activities: Ice Climbing Season: Spring | Page By: mikemcneil Created/Edited: Jun 7, 2011 / Jun 9, 2011 Object ID: 720880 Hits: 522 Loading... Page Score: 86.25% - 2 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
Hiking in.Include The day started as it has quite a few times at 10 pm. I drive from Spearfish to Sundance to pick up Keith and he drives us to Circle Park in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. We are out to climb ice despite the fact that it is June and it was over 90 degrees a couple of days ago. We are heading to Big Horn Mountain which has several large cirques on it one of which we had done two 8 pitch routes in the last decade. This is the Chill Lake Cirque and it has the couloir that is apperently on Wyoming license plates at one time. We get to the trail head and start hiking at 2am. There is an unbelievable amount of snow in the Big Horns this year so we end up snow shoeing the whole way. The ground is fairly frozen so we are hopeful of good ice conditions.Our first route in the cirque In the past we had completed two routes that consisted of snow rock and ice and are about 1500ft in length.The pictures above are of the crux ice pitch and the full route of the first route we put in. If you look closely you can see the ice pillar in the middle of the large chimney. I don't remember the year but we did it on May 27th which is pretty late for ice climbing in these parts.
Second Route These two shots are on the second route we did a couple of years later on May 11th. You can see the close up of one of the water ice pitches coming off the snow field. In the larger picture you can see the same pillar that goes to the snowfield. You then traverse left across the snowfield to the large chimney that constantly gets smaller untill it is a squeeze with rock on one side and ice on the other. We got these two routes done but, we had been in there trying many other times. The Big Horns are only 150 miles of interstate from home so with the price of gas it makes more sence thanever to use the resourses close to home.Setting up campWe get to the cirque at around 7am and decide to set up camp and brew up before heading up to climb. This takes a couple of hours and we head to climb at around 9am.Approaching the climb We head up into the cirque and traverse very steep snow for many hundreds of meters crossing several recent wet spring slides on the way. The snow keeps getting steeper and steeper as we approach the wall. We then jump onto a rock island and climb some rock to a point we set up a belay. It turns harder than we thought and Keith drops me a rope from above to get to the belay he has set several meters higher. Traversing to the Ice We then head to the left on steep snow placing rock pro in the overhanging cliff above. The pitch ends with about 10 meters of snow covered ice. It was the first good sticks I have gotten in a couple of months. It is hard to know what is snow and what is ice at times but as we are out there you start to see that there is more ice than what there appears to be as a lot of it just looks like snow.The pillar Keith then heads off on to big ice pitch. As we are heading there ice and snow are constantly falling as it is really starting to heat up. Keith blows this off and heads up the pitch. It is going well until about two thirds height when he is having a hard time getting pro and is running into unconsoldated ice. Up to this point he had gotten several rock pieces and an ice screw or two.BailingWe end up having to bail as Keith was willing to go no farther and I knew that if he couldn't deal with it I had know business up there. He builds an v-thread that took quite some time and is getting soaked from snow melt and hit falling ice. We didn't get up the route, but just being there is an inspiring experience. We will be back again.Crashing at camp Keith is shot from the stress of a scetchy lead, no sleep, and freezing so I head up into the other cirque to take some more pictures. I am treated to a great light show from the alpinglow. I also see many new climbing objectives to keep my interest for future years. I see many ice pillars, boulders, big walls, and huge chimneys.Leaving We get up early the next morning and get back to the car by 9am. I get back to town at around noon and it is in the upper 80's and very humid. I have to then mow the lawn as it is getting out of control. The contrast between worlds not that far apart never seems to amaze me. Images
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Big Horn Range > Bighorn Peak > Big Horn Peak Ice
