Well, we were pretty goddam far off and fundamentally stupid if you want to know the truth. The colored lines tell the sad and awful story. And by the way, there's not much to see up there where we were, for what it's worth. We strongly discourage you from going up to have a look.

Brian: The irony of this whole debacle is that it's not like the approach to Hitchcock is nebulous or something. It's a goddamn highway. You really can't miss it unless, and this is the key part, you have no idea what you're looking for.

I don't totally agree with this statement. You do definitely have to know what you're looking for. But when directly under the route it is not completely visible, depending on conditions, and things looked very different than before. But I was a long, long way off.

So what did we do?

The first thing that occurred to us was to try to do Streamline. So we picked up the packs and hurried back to the car to look at the guidebook to figure out the best way to park and approach. When we got to the car and looked at the book we learned that we had been standing in the best place to approach Streamline, and that we were currently parked in the lot from which to do the approach. If we wanted to walk back about 2 miles (we didn't) to find the route, we could do that.

So, um. No.

The next thought was to go over to Cathedral Ledges and do a workout on the North End Slabs, which contain many moderate and easy routes. We hightail it over there, only to find every conceivable line covered in toprope.

I suggest we go over to nearby Whitehorse Ledges to see if there's ice on Beginner's Route. I also know of a place to ice boulder off right of the Ledges. Drive over there. You've heard of no dice? Remove the "D" and you get what we found. Nothing on the slabs, nothing for bouldering. Only about a foot of very windblown snow on top of rock (there were deposition zones at the base where small slides had occured and a [failed] Reutschbloch dug nearby). To give Brian and myself a little space, I walked the couple hundred feet over to Citadel Boulder to see what it was like in winter.

It looked like a big, fat rock with no ice on it.

I get back to the car and Brian (who kept it together the whole time, cooly and calmly) suggests that we go back over to Cathedral and wait for a route to open. It's about 2.30pm by now. I had thought about heading over to Wild Things to fondle gear, but this seemed as good an idea as any. So we drove back over. I think Brian mainly wanted to go back over and ogle The Prow (III 5.7 C1+), which he intends to drag me up bodily next season.

Brian: With Cathedral a mess we headed to Whitehorse, which was even worse. At least there were CLIMBS at Cathedral. Mike's batting average plummeted with each new suggestion but I wasn't mad at him, just the day as a whole. Mike trudged off to check out some boulder. I followed for a bit and then decided that I had covered enough worthless ground for one day. So I but my pack down and made myself comfortable. As I lay there I could think of but one way to describe the day thus far. Cover your eyes if you must, but that word is,

Clusterfuck.

The children might prefer "C.F." Don't go ask your parents what that means, kids.

If I could have waved my wand to produce some ice at Whitehorse or anywhere else convenient, trust me, I would have.