Christmas 09 Trip

Winter climb in the wasatch

Just a couple of pics of our tour/climb in Dry Creek. We had initially intended to ascent to the Alpine/cottonwood ridge, camp, and then climb the North Ridge of the Pfeifferhorn on the 27th. As it turned out we had a long eventful night on the 26th, which caused us to camp well bellow our intended camp location.

Cold Cold night ascent

Things started out a bit late, but all seemed to be looking good as Mark and I left the trail head. Using skis and climbing skins we started up the Dry creek trail. Mark had shown me his method of attaching the tails of his climbing skins, ski straps wrapped around the tail of each ski, he told me that's how he did it on Denali, so I did not think it would be a problem.
As I followed Mark, I found both of his ski straps lying in the trail, this was just a hint on the trouble to come. After several hours of climbing, we came to a steep stream crossing, Mark went first, as he was making his way up the other side, one of his skins came off. After roughly 45 minutes of trying to warm the skin enough to make it stick we came up with the idea of heating the skin inside my JetBoil. Thankfully, after becoming very cold from standing still for such a long time, the skin stuck and we were on our way.

Camp 1

Mark had the idea that we would ascend directly up Dry Creek, under Chippman peak, to the ridge. In the dark, and not having been in the area before, we lost our way and ended up taking a route that added several hours to out climb. At around 12:30 am, and at 9100ft elevation, we decided that we were not going to make it to the originally planned camp location at 10,500ft. So we found a spot and dug in for the night.

Camp 2

After a somewhat cold night, we continued on intent on making the ridge, however heavy packs and trail breaking conditions found us a just 10,000ft at roughly 2:45pm. Another adjustment to our original plan and we were digging in at camp 2. This night was to be a very cold night.

Parting ways.

Our initial plan had Mark and I meeting at our camp location with Matt, aka Marauders, and Brenton on the morning of the 28th, to climb Thunderbolt ridge. With the great expense of time and energy just getting to camp 2, plans had changed drastically. Mark, Matt, and Brenton made an ascent of Chippman Peak, wanting to make some turns on the 5000ft plus Dry Creek drainage, I packed up and skied. We all met up again at about 10:30 pm at my home.
Thunderbolt and the North Ridge remain for another day.

Images

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