Winter Dance and the snow monster

Nate Opp and I climbed Winter Dance on Sunday.  It's in great condition right now with heeps of ice.  I would say it was in the best conditon I have ever found.

The first pitch is fat with ice right now, usually it's totally dry rock.

Pitch two is M8 or AO, I opted for the M8 and was reminded of how good the climbing is on this pitch.  The soft rock really lends itself to drytooling and pulling through the roof is soooo cool and wild.  I inspected all the bolts on the rappel and they seem to be secure, either way there is a lot of them, it's a bolt ladder.  Clip them all!

Pitch three WI7 and also very wild.  Cruxy entry moves off the belay leads to a rest then more steep ice and thin in spots.  Toward the top Nate crawled through a hole and out the other side, 20 feet later he was in the belay cave.  This cave is like the ice cave where the snow monster lives, it's huge.  You know the snow monster from the Rudolph cartoon.

Pitch four was interesting, we had to chop a hole to get out of the cave so we could reach the final curtin.  It was in the WI 5+ range; all wet and juicy and the best ice on the route.  We toped out around 2 and then rappelled off the nice tree at the top.  A nice little pine with strong roots.

In closing, it was a great wintery dance in the hills with a good friend and some WILD climbing!

~Whit Magro