Slow Burn

Sunday morning wasn?t a day you wanted to think about standing around. With temps hovering near 0 the thought of standing at a belay for more than a few minutes seemed like a self inflicted from of torture, I wanted nothing to do with freezing for fun. Luckily for me Jim Earl had been tromping around Pine Creek the week prior and had stumbled on what looked like a locigical alpine climb snaking it?s way from the bottom of the South Fork drainage to what appeared to be the summit of Mt. Black?s nearest neighbor. We could see distinct sections of ice in six places and knew we would encounter some rock given the ?thin? and ?white appearance? of the ice. By 10:00 AM the crampons were on, movement to keep the body warm was again resuming as we started to simil-climb. We began climbing sections of ice ranging from the first 200ft step to others 35ft in length, mostly in the WI3 category but with a few WI 4 sections. We continued methodically moving over each steep section until we felt the first rays of sunshine nearly half of the distance up the route. We had been climbing for close to 3 hours and needed to have some food. Despite the freezing temps in the shade, once we left the shade a wave of heat energy directed from the sun made life much more pleasant. After a quick lunch we broke out the rope for the crux of the route. A mixed rock section at 5.9+ with good gear kept the climbing interesting. Jim amazingly managed to follow the pitch with his bare hands; giving some idea to the power of the sun that day. We proceeded to simil-climb through the next several hundred feet of moderate mixed terrain finding mostly rock gear due to the poor quality of ice bonding to the rock. The final technical headwall was all good ice and rolled into the last snowfield leading to a rocky ridge scramble and the summit. Six hours after putting on the crampons we were standing on top together. Amazing views of every mountain range in our area were present and not a breath of wind. We opted for a quick butt slide down a couloir off the backside, dropping us into the Pine Creek lake drainage. Despite some severe post-holing on the descent the snow conditions were some of the best I had ever experienced with most sections on the route being the best styrofoam imaginable for climbing with crampons. We eventually arrived back to the car 11+ hours from the time we departed. The route proved to be more than a great day out it was an amazing ?Slow Burn? on my calves. A great alpine experience for those interested. 5000ft from the car, 3500ft total feet in the couloir-1200ft of technical climbing, WI4 5.9+ Kristoffer Erickson [img]http://montanaice.com/forums/user_images/2006_1217_CLI_17.jpg[/img] [img]http://montanaice.com/forums/user_images/2006_1217_CLI_43.jpg[/img] [img]http://montanaice.com/forums/user_images/2006_1217_CLI_55.jpg[/img] [img]http://montanaice.com/forums/user_images/2006_1217_CLI_69.jpg[/img] [img]http://montanaice.com/forums/user_images/2006_1217_CLI_78.jpg[/img] [img]http://montanaice.com/forums/user_images/2006_1217_CLI_94.jpg[/img] [img]http://montanaice.com/forums/user_images/2006_1217_CLI_105.jpg[/img] [img]http://montanaice.com/forums/user_images/2006_1217_CLI_110.jpg[/img]