Route Climbed: Hyas Creek/Daniel Glacier Date Climbed: Spring, 1999
A friend of mine wanted her first glacier experience, and Daniel seemed like a good choice from its description in Selected Climbs in the Cascades and the Beckey book. The mountain was starting to melt out when we were on it, but we still got some good snow camping in in the Hyas Creek basin before heading up. We ended up climbing high and right above the Hyas glacier because there was enough snow to do that safely, and we could avoid any crevasses that way.
Once we met back up with the Hyas Glacier, just before crossing the Daniel Glacier, we debated roping up for the traverse below the East peak because there was a huge crevasse 200 feet below our planned route, but there was also a big bergshrund that we could hook our axes in, and it seemed like the danger of rockfall was high enough that we wanted to race through that spot. We decided not to rope up, but the three parties behind us did rope up for the traverse.
Overall, Daniels is a beautiful, not-too-technical climb in the heart of the Alpine Lakes.
ben - Oct 5, 2001 3:29 pm
Route Climbed: Hyas Creek/Daniel Glacier Date Climbed: Spring, 1999A friend of mine wanted her first glacier experience, and Daniel seemed like a good choice from its description in Selected Climbs in the Cascades and the Beckey book. The mountain was starting to melt out when we were on it, but we still got some good snow camping in in the Hyas Creek basin before heading up. We ended up climbing high and right above the Hyas glacier because there was enough snow to do that safely, and we could avoid any crevasses that way.
Once we met back up with the Hyas Glacier, just before crossing the Daniel Glacier, we debated roping up for the traverse below the East peak because there was a huge crevasse 200 feet below our planned route, but there was also a big bergshrund that we could hook our axes in, and it seemed like the danger of rockfall was high enough that we wanted to race through that spot. We decided not to rope up, but the three parties behind us did rope up for the traverse.
Overall, Daniels is a beautiful, not-too-technical climb in the heart of the Alpine Lakes.