Off to Middle Palisade glacier… would we need to rope up for the crevasses as is so often required?
Didn’t take long to reach Finger Lake. Looked pretty cool on the north end. Rain had clear water running in and mixing with the glacial silt.
Camped up at a tarn at 11,400 feet. Raining just a bit here. We originally had thoughts we might climb both The Thumb and Disappointment over two days, but weather put an end to those thoughts soon enough.
The next day we headed up the glacier.
Several of the crevasses were open deep enough that you couldn’t see the bottom. We stepped over a few and then practiced crevasse jumping.
Plan was to go up Doug’s Chute or the Northeast Couloir to Disappointment Peak, but the bergshrund and snow wasn’t cooperating.
The normal route to the east ridge didn’t look great either, and was mostly scree with ridiculous amounts of serious rockfall below. We chose a chute to the west hoping it would work out. Ran into a good bit of ice which wasn’t great on aluminum crampons, then a short but significant class 5 headwall at the top, slowed us down as we stared at it for way too long but eventually we made it to the east ridge.
We didn’t take the normal route to traverse Balcony Peak, but rather found a traverse about 200 feet higher. Probably not better or worse. Maybe more interesting, but we were surely slower than most. Then the scramble up to the summit, with Balcony Peak on the right. The Thumb in the background and Birch Mountain in the clouds.
Weather came in and there was a bit of lightning on Split Mountain 4 miles to the south, but we made it through ok where we were.
Middle Palisade Glacier
Coming down the chute I refused to enter the main chute down low, in part not wanting to deal with the ice and also it was subject to enormous rockfall. As it turns out when we were near the bottom several hundred pounds of rock sailed down the chute just a few feet over from us… twice. We were close enough that a few stray pebbles sprayed onto us. All we could do was sit and crouch and hope we were correctly positioned. Then we rapped over the bergschrund. My favorite shot as my partner flew through the air as the lip of the snow broke. Somewhat intentionally.
Descending back to camp.
Rockfall prone chute we descended. What missed us was but a small portion of the daily distribution on the left. We had rapped down the steeper rocks only slightly to the left of it.
Another shot with the morning’s crevasses in the background.
Mount Sill and Mount Gayley as we departed Sunday.