We descended this route after accidentally climbing a new route on the N Face of Agassiz. Soft snow earlier in the day suckered us into leaving our crampons at camp, so when we descended at night, the snow on the descent was too hard and icy to walk on! By avoiding the snow patches and climbing closer to the ridgeline, the route is broken low-5th class.
justinjohnsen - Oct 11, 2007 12:16 pm Date Climbed: Oct 7, 2007
Not enough daylight
We hiked the clear trail to Sam Mack Meadow, then dug camp out of several inches of fresh powder that fell the night before. Conditions looked good for the southwest chute, so we took our ice axes and scouted it. It was steep and slippery in places as reported, but usable to climb out of the meadow. Crampons would help this chute under many conditions, but with the fresh snow they seemed unnecessary.
The next morning we took the SW chute up to the unnamed lake south of Sam Mack. We traversed the cliffs west of the lake to a gully through the moraine south of there. When the gully became too steep for our tastes, we scouted a roundabout route forward on a short cliffy plateau, then got back on track, heading west to the second-to-last lake before Agassiz Col. Every step in the vast moraine below Palisade Glacier had to be tested under the fresh snow; the route easily took double the time we expected. With our turnaround time upon us and little daylight to work with, we reluctantly left our clear view of the route to the top of Agassiz.
We took a more direct route back down our gully, and found it just as time-consuming as our roundabout uphill bypass. The bottom contained many deep snow-covered crevices between boulders begging to twist an ankle, and at one point we had to climb up a steep bottleneck with very loose rocky/muddy footing.
If others try this side of Agassiz in the snow, I'd recommend trying to get back on the route described in the main article. In hindsight, getting up to Sam Mack Lake and following its inlet up the series of unnamed lakes may have used more solid (and faster) footing than our moraine gully slog.
PellucidWombat - Jul 1, 2010 7:42 pm Date Climbed: Jul 15, 2006
Epic Late Night DescentWe descended this route after accidentally climbing a new route on the N Face of Agassiz. Soft snow earlier in the day suckered us into leaving our crampons at camp, so when we descended at night, the snow on the descent was too hard and icy to walk on! By avoiding the snow patches and climbing closer to the ridgeline, the route is broken low-5th class.
justinjohnsen - Oct 11, 2007 12:16 pm Date Climbed: Oct 7, 2007
Not enough daylightWe hiked the clear trail to Sam Mack Meadow, then dug camp out of several inches of fresh powder that fell the night before. Conditions looked good for the southwest chute, so we took our ice axes and scouted it. It was steep and slippery in places as reported, but usable to climb out of the meadow. Crampons would help this chute under many conditions, but with the fresh snow they seemed unnecessary.
The next morning we took the SW chute up to the unnamed lake south of Sam Mack. We traversed the cliffs west of the lake to a gully through the moraine south of there. When the gully became too steep for our tastes, we scouted a roundabout route forward on a short cliffy plateau, then got back on track, heading west to the second-to-last lake before Agassiz Col. Every step in the vast moraine below Palisade Glacier had to be tested under the fresh snow; the route easily took double the time we expected. With our turnaround time upon us and little daylight to work with, we reluctantly left our clear view of the route to the top of Agassiz.
We took a more direct route back down our gully, and found it just as time-consuming as our roundabout uphill bypass. The bottom contained many deep snow-covered crevices between boulders begging to twist an ankle, and at one point we had to climb up a steep bottleneck with very loose rocky/muddy footing.
If others try this side of Agassiz in the snow, I'd recommend trying to get back on the route described in the main article. In hindsight, getting up to Sam Mack Lake and following its inlet up the series of unnamed lakes may have used more solid (and faster) footing than our moraine gully slog.