The Return of Mule Man and Little Boy
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Yours truly, same spot. I had wanted to peer over the North Face and take a look, but being up there, seeing the three inches of ice over slabs, I wasn't getting anywhere near it.
Well, now we had to get down. We followed the ridge over to a second, lower summit, then picked through a bit of treeline, where we finally emerged on an abrupt slab. Very abrupt. I'm sorry I don't have any photos. We were sort of... we had our minds on other things. We had read that the descent was steep, but we did not expect what we were seeing. Horribly verglassed, very steep slabs, extending down and completely out of view. James picked his way out and took a look down. He came back unencouraged. We would definitely have to rappel. Neither one of us felt comfortable downclimbing any of the terrain with 40 lbs. packs. And we did have gear... There was a fair bit of krummholz (mountain shrubbery often found at treeline) just left of the slabs. James and I excavated snow and ice from a 6" thick, 2' tall shrub and fed our 50m half-rope around it. James offered to go first. I let him. He rappelled and downclimbed over steep, iced-over slabs before traversing climber's right and disappearing out of sight. In a few minutes he called that he was off rappel. I set up my ATC and started down, deciding to go directly over a rock bulge rather than traverse, after consulting with James and figuring that the anchor would probably hold my weight. I hoped. |
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