I first climbed Cascade last summer, but it was just a hike up trails/ridges. Nothing too intense. The mountain has the good fortune of being covered in very appealing snow couloirs in the winter and spring. They’re obviously not super safe to climb in winter, but they’re great in spring. I decided last week that I was going to climb up one of them. The plan wasn’t to summit the mountain (the true summit is a couple miles north of where I had planned on topping out, and I’d been there last year), but just to go up a gully and come down.

After a couple days of false starts (not wanting to get out of bed when my alarm went off at 5), I finally decided to just do the thing. So I got up at 8, got ready, left at 8:30, and was out of the car and hiking by 9:30. One cool thing about the particular gully that I chose is that it starts right off the road. You park and start hiking up it. Very cool. There wasn’t any snow for the first ten minutes and 300 vertical feet, but then I hit it.

The snow was nice and hard and I put my crampons on. An hour after starting (starting elevation is 7,100’) I was about a thousand feet up. At 11:30 (after 2 hours), I was at 9,500’. After that I got out of the couloir and onto a ridge where the snow was softer and deeper, making for slower going. I also had to scramble up a couple fourth class/easy fifth class rock bands. At 12:50 I was on top of the summit ridge (10,600).

By this time it was getting windier and colder, so I was only too happy to be getting down (at 1:00). I didn’t want to have to go through that deep snow and downclimb the rock steps, though, so I decided to head down one of the gullies on the west side of the mountain. I glissaded (slid down on my butt) for the first 1,500’ or so, which was a little bit painful but was super fast. Then I had to down climb another couple rock bands (they weren’t as steep or tall as the ones on the ascent, though). The snow ended eventually and I made it back to the dirt road that my car was parked on (at 2:00; 7,600’). That’s coming down three thousand vertical feet in an hour! Nice! The only problem was that my car was parked 2.2 miles further up the road. So I set off and made it back to the car at 2:45.

On the way back home, I saw a moose by the side of the road. I ended the day with a bit of slacklining with friends.

My ascent and descent routes.

The ascent route. The middle and right toes of the "Crow's Foot" are the snow-filled gullies to the right.

Looking up the couloir from near the road.

Some nice unclimbed limestone about 600 vertical feet up the gully.

Looking up.

Looking down.

Again, looking down. The helmet is to for rockfall (I did see some basketball-sized stones come down).

One of the fourth/fifth class rock steps.

Looking down from higher up on the mountain.

Looking at some of the other 10- and 11-thousand-foot peaks in the area.

Looking down my descent/glissade route.

Foggy glasses.

Me slacklining.

Friends and slacklines.

Moose.

Ah… Everest Ridge… This route on Utah’s most famous mountain has tempted me for years. It’s looms over Utah Valley and I’ve seen it pretty much every day for several years. My dad climbed it back in the 60s. People usually climb it in two days, with day one being a 2.8 mile hike to Baldy Saddle (2,890’ elevation gain), spend the night at the saddle, then take off early the next day for the summit (3,409’ elevation gain). I hate camping when I don’t have to, so I decided the best thing for me to do was to knock the bugger off in a day.

Oh, and it’s called Everest Ridge because a team of Utahns in the early 90’s trained on the ridge as part of a training plan for Everest.

I had wanted to climb Timp on a Monday, and I went to bed early on Sunday night. I couldn’t fall asleep, though, because some annoying and ridiculously loud freshman girls came over to visit one of my roommates. Ugh. College… So I put it off to the next day. I still only got a few hours of sleep on Monday night, but it was more than I would have gotten on Sunday.

SO. Yeah, I woke up at 2 a.m., got my stuff ready, and was out the door by 2:30. The drive to the trailhead was uneventful and took about 25 minutes, and I was hiking by 3. The hike up to Baldy Saddle goes through Dry Canyon. I’d hiked up Dry Canyon before, and something about the trail I was on this time didn’t seem right. It was wider and trended more to the left than it should have. I ended up going for about 15 minutes and half a mile before turning back. By the time I got back on the right trail, I’d gone a mile and wasted half an hour. So, for anyone reading this: don’t take the wide trail at the north end of the parking lot! Take the narrower trail at the far right (south) side of the parking lot! The right trail starts off relatively steep and there are some large railroad ties making steps.

The first mile and a half or so of the trail was pretty pleasant. There wasn’t any snow and it wasn’t too steep. There was a lot of snow on that last mile and the going was slower. I made it to Baldy Saddle at 5:15 (~1:45 after starting). I had left the trail and cut straight up to the saddle, making the distance from the trailhead to saddle 2.75 miles instead of the 2.84 if you stay on the trail the whole way.

The weekend before, a large group of people had climbed Everest Ridge, and they had carved out several tent platforms in the snow. I sat in one of them for a few minutes and rested while I put my crampons on and took my ice axe out. Up until that point, I had felt pretty good. But then the wind started to blow harder, prompting me to put on a long sleeve shirt and shell jacket.

From Baldy Saddle, I followed the footprints southeast through a grove of trees. Everest Ridge at this point is split into two ridges, and I went up the wide gully between the two spurs to gain the ridge proper. I felt like I was going really, really slowly. That’s one bad thing about carrying a GPS… I call tell how fast or slow I’m going. But I could definitely feel the lack of sleep from the past couple nights. In fact, at any given spot on the climb, I’m confident that I could have just sat down and fallen asleep.

It got bright enough sometime between 6 and 6:30 for me to take my headlamp off. It was beautiful being able to see the sunrise from up there. I followed the ridge upward for what seemed like miles until I reached the crux of the route: a cliff band at something like 11,200 feet. It’s possible to climb directly through the cliffs, but most people traverse around them to the right, and that’s what I did. The slopes before and after this part are the steepest of the route, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! The exposure was a lot of fun to.

I eventually made it to the summit ridge, but still had to traverse about .4 miles to the summit proper. This took a lot longer than I thought it would. I’m not sure exactly how long it took, but maybe 30-45 minutes? I finally made it to the summit at 9 on the dot, meaning that it took 5 ½ hours from the parking lot.

Climbing mountains is a funny thing. I spent all that time and effort climbing this freaking mountain and only spent about 15 minutes on top. I ate a snickers, some peanut brittle, and a Clif Bar. Immediately after, my stomach starting feeling a bit unsettled. I hoped for the best, took some pictures, and started down at 9:15.

The descent down the ridge sucked. The sun had softened the snow considerably, and I postholed up to my knee or higher with almost every step. It seemed to take an eternity to get back down to the saddle, but it really took about two and a half hours. It was horrible. I glissaded when I could, but it was just slow going down that stupid thing. The postholing destroyed my knees, too. I made it back down to the saddle at about 11:45, so it took about 2 ½ hours to get down.

From the saddle, I ran down the trail as fast as I could. A lot of the snow on the upper portion of the trail was melting fast. As a result, the trough-like trail had turned into a small stream, soaking my feet even further. Getting off of the snow and onto the dirt was a mixed blessing: I could move faster, but it also jarred my knees more. I made it back down to my car at 1 o’clock, for a total round trip time of about 9 ½ hours. I’m ok with that time. This was my first big hike/climb of the season, so I’m not in perfect shape. Also, the horrible snow conditions and gastrointestinal problems (which I was constantly dealing with the whole way down) definitely added some time.

I’m writing this the day after my climb. I got 13 hours of sleep last night and needed every minute of it. My legs, butt, and knees are sore, but I’m feeling pretty good. The whole experience at the time was, to be honest, pretty terrible. I was hurting the whole way down. But now that I’m sitting in my comfortable chair typing this up, I realize what a great adventure it was. I swore yesterday that I would never do it again, but I’m already having second thoughts. I’ll probably do a different route next winter. I’m thinking of doing the one that comes down directly from the summit. It’s narrow and has a couple more rock steps. Should be fun! Anyone want to join me?

A photo of Timpanogos with the Everest Ridge route marked. I stole this pic from Wikipedia...

Click here for the original version of the above photo.

Starting to get a little bit lighter now...

You can see the rock band near the top of the ridge that is the crux of the route.

Looking down the ridge.

One of the steeper sections. Fun!

The rightward traverse that avoids the rock bands.

Looking north from the summit ridge to the summit. You can see the small hut (with the point on top) that is on the summit.

Me on top.

Looking south from the summit.

Looking down onto the Timpanogos "glacier."

The ridge, the suburbs, and Utah Lake.

Looking north.

The scar of a massive slab avalanche.

The trench-like trail that turned into a small stream.

I called Crisco last night and asked if he wanted to go climbing. I told him that there was this chimney/gully thing in Rock Canyon that had some ice in it that would make a fun mixed route. It’s the wall past George/The Kitchen that comes pretty much right down to the trail. Fast forward to 9:15 this morning when we arrived at the base of the route. “Where’s the ice?” Crisco asked. “There isn’t any. I just told you that to get you here.” I took a stubby screw just in case, though.

It had snowed several inches the night before and the whole chimney system was covered in the stuff. From the trail, the route looked like it would be about 100 feet long. I led the first pitch. It started out with a fun little bulge, then went over a couple more bulges with some thorny plants and lots of snow thrown in between them. The pitch just kept going and going and before I knew it, Crisco yelled up and said that I had 15 feet of rope left on my 60. I climbed up one more bulge (which turned out to be the crux), but I had used up all of my big pro so I couldn’t protect it. I set up a crappy belay that consisted of a small KB piton (that went in a little too easily), two crappy nuts, and a good small cam and belayed Crisco up. We looked up and figured we had about 30′ to go to the top.

I led the next pitch, too, which went up a fun, steep little drytooling section and then more snow gully. There were another one or two bulges after that that were a little bit tricky and eventually (150 feet later) belayed from a good-sized tree. I belayed Crisco up to me, but we still weren’t at the top yet. We had to trudge through knee-deep snow up (south) for 100-150 feet or so until we saw a brush-choked gully coming up from the left. We fought our way through it and eventually made it back down the trail.

The route took a while, maybe 4 hours backpack to backpack. It was slow going in the chimney because I had to clear off all of the snow from every hold. The route’s about 450-500 feet long if you include the snow slope on top. I’m guessing that this has been climbed before, but maybe not. And maybe not in winter? Not sure. Anyway, it was a ton of fun. I’d give the route 2 stars out of 5–a solid “good.” It’s definitely better than climbing in the gym. Crisco asked what we should name it, then suggested the name Higbee Gully. I’ve never had an eponymous route, so I agreed. Again, maybe this has been done before and has a name. If so, let me know what it is.

For gear, I took a set of nuts and a set of Camalots to #4. Doing it again, I’d take an extra set of cams from red (#1) through blue (#3) Camalot. The pitches are long. I didn’t use any screws.

The start of the route from the trail.

The route from near the Appendage.

Me stemming my way up the first pitch.

Looking down the first pitch from halfway up.

Looking up at me from halfway up the first pitch (taken by Crisco).

Me on the fun section just above the belay.

Crisco and me after the climb and the brutal descent through thigh-deep snow.

The route as seen from the Appendage. The route is marked in blue, the descent is marked in yellow.

Crisco has been trying to get me to go ice climbing for the past few weekends, but I’ve 1) been busy, and 2) been dreading being that cold. Ice climbing is a very, um… interesting pursuit. It’s terrifying. It’s mind- and body-numbingly cold. And sometimes it’s downright painful. This is my fourth year climbing ice (I’ve been rock climbing for a decade) and I still dread it, it still makes me nervous. In addition to being covered in very sharp, pointy pieces of steel, you’ve got danger from avalanches and falling rock and ice. In short… it’s scary.

With that out of the way, yeah, Crisco, Matt, and I went up to Stairway to Heaven in Provo Canyon today. We climbed a couple variations to the first pitch and then we did a two pitch line. It was great! The past few days I’ve just been in a funk. I’ve been feeling apathetic toward everything. Ice climbing was what I needed to get the zeal back!

Approaching the ice.

Crisco climbing.

Me on the first pitch.

Me belaying Crisco on pitch 2.