So what we basically found out was: this is essentially the route. This is where it ends. We think. There's a little cavey thing there on the right. Goes nowheres. Some very cool little icicles, which you can't really see, that had been blown and frozen upwards due to wind in the hollow. Other than that: nothing.

I have this kinda silly thing about topping out: I sorta like to. This is partly because of my sloggineering ethic, and partly because I'm frequently pathetically slow downclimbing. I sometimes work myself into a panic making my way down, and more often than not decide that the only sensible option is to rap slopes as flat as tabletops.

So anyway, we ran up this little snow... it wasn't a gully... it was like a little toy slide you'd situate next to a kiddie pool you'd fill up with a garden hose? You know those? Good. We're on the same page. So we top out on that - epic - and we decide that maybe we should eat something, because while we had tried eating here and there on the route, we were both breathing so hard on the way up that anything we put in our mouths just spewed right back out onto the snow, due to the wheezing. So some GU, some mixed nutage. And looking. Ah yes, the looking.

I spy, with my little eye: a continuation of a gully-type thing, above us. Now, it's completely untracked and has about 20-foot-deep snow in it, over blowdown, but I think it's doable.

Brian: Down.
Me: I think, really, that it may be doable.
Brian: Yeah. No.
Me: Let's just sit quietly. Hold that anger, cradle that rage. Hold it...
Brian: Come over here, look across at where we are.
Me: [Terrified, moving across a 4-degree snow slope to get a better view] Ah, yes. Well, it is a ways up, isn't it?
Brian: I would say so.

[Birds chirping.]

Me: Okay. I'll just give this a try. I really think it's the thing to do. I'll go out front. I'll do that for you. We'll go up for 20 minutes. If after 20 minutes we are truly nowhere, I will absolutely turn around, okay? Completely. Don't even. Fine. Yes. Total agreement here. No arguments. I mean, I don't want to do anything pointless either. And just remember, I've been up on this section of the mountain before. I know what we might be in for. You, on the other hand, have not. Why, just across the way is Pogue Mahone, my route. It has never been repeated.

[Three minutes later. Seven vertical feet higher.]

Me: [Neck-deep in froth] Let's go down.

And so we did.

Down, down, down. Long way down.

The route was... it was a day out, okay? Actually, I had a good time. All the way down I was thinking, "Can't wait to get down to the trail. Can't wait to get down to that flat trail. That flat trail that should be totally tracked out by snowshoers by now. Can't wait. This is gonna be good. Good end to a long day."