Killer Pillar & other Flanders Climbs

Skied in and climbed Killer Pillar and Men Are From Mars yesterday. Here are a few comments:

APPROACH - Looked like we were the first party up there in quite a while. The trail up Flanders looks like it's getting lots of traffic, but there was no trail to the climb. We skied past the bottom of the gully below the pillar, then cut back right through the trees, crossed the gully about mid-height, switchbacked a few times on the right side of the gully and then left the skies when we started getting to some rock. There was still quite a bit of wallowing involved. If you follow our trail, you'll see where we scrambled up a cliff band to avoid a final, longish wallow left to the base of the climb. I think I would recommend the wallow instead. After the second member of the party cratered into the snow from about 10 feet up when a hold broke (then got up, dusted himself off and successfully soloed back up in plastic ski boots with a pack on his back and a big camera and rope bag both dangling in front!), we dropped a rope for the remaining two members of our four-person group. Consequently, it was a LONG approach.

THE ICE - Killer Pillar's ice was very light colored, so on the approach I was expecting it to be sun-rotted but that was not the case at all. The sun had moved on when we started climbing and the middle was very hard, cold ice that fractured a lot - pretty pumpy. The left side was very fun, dry chandeliers that you could hook your way up with single swings reaching right to place screws in the good ice. The right side was a waterfall, so if you do either of the bolted lines, you want to move fast as you step left onto the ice - fortunately there were a lot of mushrooms and hero ice conditions on that side so I only had water pouring on me for a few seconds. There was no ice at the top of Women Are from Venus.

OTHER ICE - Champagne Slot and Sherbert both looked huge and had a trail going in. High Crimes looked good too. Flanders Field had lots of ice up high but looked thin at the bottom. First pitch of Bobo Like wasn't touching. Big Sleep had lots of ice on it. Way in the distance Code Red looked in, but I've never been up there so don't know for sure.