Chewing some meat off the bone on the Prime Rib Gulley . . .

Oh goody, time to get out.

A three week long sinus infection, miserable weather snow rain, inversion. I am weak but I need to get out. I had been planning to get on some snow; my buddy John was calling those hikes “snow stumbles”. That he explains, is where you hike with no snowshoes and slip slide around until you get back to where you started.

So I wanted to do something moderate, about 2000+ feet of gain with the hopes that we could catch some “Styrofoam” snow up higher. So who to go with? I invited everybody and naturally the first person invited, the ol stand by, the guy that almost never says no, Splattski, is the one who accepted.

A new route?

We start the day with the Class 3 SE Rib route as our goal. After getting to the base of the SE Rib I looked and noticed a mellower looking gulley on the northeast side of the Rib. Hey “Voodoo Child” (new nickname for JP), let’s go investigate that route, want to? Of course he is too much of a gentleman to say no to anyone.



It took us probably 45 minutes to an hour to get to the base of the gulley and I was moving slow, very slow, slower than normal. We were post holing with snowshoes almost the entire gulley to the summit. I couldn’t find a pace of any kind. John later explained I was like 3 or 4 steps fast and stop and rest. Definitely not the way to do it!

Man am I glad thats over . .

So I am out of sync and out of wind and finally I reach the summit tower. Its cold and the wind is blowing and the fog is rolling in fast, time to head down. We chose the SE Rib route to go down. Its is a hard down climb without snow so here we go. Not too bad up high but as we near the bottom John is looking up to me stopped. I say are we cliffed out? Yes he chimes and says you got to use what juice you have left, the fog is rolling in. So he moves back and down from the cliff and traverses around the Rib band.


Things starting getting slick. My rhythm is better going down (Gravity). John was worried that we get to our tracks at the bottom if the Rib where we diverted originally so if the fog took over we would have reference to get back to the car. We finish it up.




The trip was about 2300 feet of elevation gain on about 4 miles round trip and a lot of traversing in the snowshoes.

A good day with John (aka Voodoo Child, Splattski and Bubba) He answers to all of them. If he was a Native American Indian his name would be “Man with many names”

“Well, I stand up next to a mountain
And I chop it down with the edge of my hand
Well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island
Might even raise a little sand ... cause I'm a voodoo child” . . . Jimmy Hendrix





Thanks Flash!

Splattski Trip Report

Images

View Chewing some meat off the bone on the Prime Rib Gulley . . . Image Gallery - 7 Images