Ice Mountain via the Refrigerator Couloir

Despite the prevailing warm temps and a "mostly cloudy" overnight forecast, we decided to give the Refrigerator Couloir a shot over a weekend in mid-June.  My wife, Debbie, and I drove to the TH on Saturday afternoon (my Subaru Forester was able to navigate the 4WD road without much trouble).  We backpacked in a couple of miles on easy trail; a couple of hundred yards before the signed junction of the Apostle Basin / Lake Anne trails, there are a couple of very nice campsites with great views of the Three Apostles (don't ask me why Ice Mtn, one of the Three Apostles, is not named "Middle Apostle").

We fell asleep in the tent during a steady evening rainstorm, but the skies cleared beautifully as we slept, and upon rising (shortly after 3am) we were heartened by the sight of the Milky Way:  we hoped this meant that long-wave radiation cooling would firm up the snowpack, despite comfortable sleeping temps around 40d at the campsite.

Some info about the approach to the couloir:

1.  At the Apostle Basin / Lake Anne trail junction, turn left on the Apostle Basin trail, and about 150 steps later, turn right at a fork onto a well-formed trail.  You will soon cross the creek on a large log and then follow the obvious trail along a rib up into the lower Apostle Basin (generally with the creek running directly below you on the left).  Note the prominent "couloir" in the cleft of the headwall ahead of you (near the center of the photo below), directly under Ice Mtn, which is your next objective.

Aim for the cleft in the headwall, above the bench.

2.  Navigate your way through the willows (we could not easily cross the creek, but there are reasonable paths through the willows), staying on snow as much as possible, so that you can turn left on snow in front of the large bench.  We donned snow shoes for this section of the approach.

3.  Work around the bench and then climb the snow up through the cleft in the headwall (it’s not as steep as it looks initially), arriving at a small lake in the upper basin.

Debbie approaches the top of the cleft.

4.  We ditched our snow shoes before climbing the slot, and fortunately the snow in the upper basin stayed reasonably firm (only an occasional posthole) into the afternoon.

5.  Traverse the lake to the left and then head up to the base of the Fridge.  We found mostly supportable crust by following a glissade track up to the couloir, which had hardened overnight (thanks to clear skies and long-wave radiative cooling of the snowpack).

The couloir itself is straightforward and of moderate steepness, briefly exceeding 45d only near the top.  We kicked steps on a breakable crust with some compression of softer snow underneath.  The cornice was underwhelming and easy to bypass on the left.  Note that, IMHO, online trip reports tend to exaggerate the steepness of the slope:  in my experience, if you subtract about 8-10d from most people's estimates of slope angle, you arrive at a number closer to reality ;-)  .

One other note:  this particular couloir has a reputation for dangerous rockfall:  Roach, in particular, comments that he and his group were almost killed by rockfall when they climbed it. However, we didn't see or hear any sign of rockfall activity during our climb, and we encountered only the usual amount of visible rock debris in the couloir.

After topping out, we scrambled up the chossy 3^rd-4^th  class ridge (without crampons) a couple of hundred feet to the summit of Ice.  There are enough solid quartz knobs to allow for relatively safe climbing through a lot of choss, though roping up and using terrain belays would be a reasonable precaution (which we did).

For our descent, we downclimbed the steeper top section, plunge stepped a bit farther down, and then we enjoyed a nice, long glissade almost to the lake, and eventually got back to camp in time to beat the afternoon T-storms.  There are several trip reports online about skiing the Refrigerator couloir, which would certainly be a fun way to descend. Needless to say, as with most couloirs this time of year, the timing is key:  you'd have to time it so you could ski on the softening surface layer but before it turns into a big bowl of mashed potatoes (with corresponding higher risk of a soft snow slide).

Images

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