The Return of Mule Man and Little Boy
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Here James climbs a short section of ice in snowshoes. This is a very steep, brief section on Armstrong, just past the Wolfjaw col. There are a few ice steps and very short mixed sections through this leg of the traverse. I put crampons on for this little slope, as it was pretty scoured after James had his way with it. It was a time-consuming move on my part, but it was ultimately safer.
We had been congratulating ourselves on the good time we were making, but the day was drawing to an end. I was not keen to try climbing the steep ridge on Gothics at night, and there was no way I was descending it in the dark. We had been moving over a 2"-6" powder layer, which masked a very hard 4" icy crust, over bottomless powder. I was concerned that there would be some instability above treeline and suggested that we find a bivy between Armstrong and Gothics. We'd tackle the harder bits tomorrow. This would put us at a slight time disadvantage on day two, but we felt we could make up for it. We found a sheltered bivy spot just off the trail and dug it out as snow began to fall. We did all the camp drudgery that one does when one does these sorts of things. Melt snow, eat, melt snow, eat, melt snow, try to sleep. And so on. Fun! Right... It was cold. We were tired. I hadn't slept much in two days and my performance was suffering for it. We both drifted off about 8pm. |
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